Creative Moments: Altered Game Boards

With proper supervision, this project is good for both children and adults. It all depends on how elaborate or complicated you'd like to get with the piece. This project requires advanced planning if you don't have a wide variety of materials on hand. Gathering a wide variety of ephemera will add interest and keep your creative wheels turning. Let's look at what the definition of ephemera is before we continue:

"Ephemera refers to written and printed matter published with a short intended lifetime. In the world of collectors common types of ephemera include letters, advertising trade cards, cigarette cards, airsickness bags, posters, postcards, bookmarks, baseball cards, tickets, greeting cards, stock certificates, photographs and zines. Decks of the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards are recent example of ephemera because they will probably lose their original purpose and interest in a relatively short time. The word derives from the Greek meaning of things lasting no more than a day.

In the field of library and information science the term ephemera is also used to describe the class of published single-sheet or single page documents which are meant to be thrown away after one use. This classification then excludes simple letters and photographs with no printing on them, which are considered as manuscripts or typescripts. It includes: postcards, event-oriented posters, transportation and show tickets, baggage stickers, stock certificates, motor vehicle licensing forms, business cards, printed wedding invitations, trade cards, and other similar printed materials.

An academic or a national library often has a rare book department tasked, in part, with the acquisition and organization of such ephemera, in order to preserve them as witnesses of local or national history. In some places museums are given this responsibility, or decide to assume it. Libraries must carefully develop criteria to decide what ephemera to acquire and save." - wikipedia.com

In addition to the ephemera, gather the following:

1: game pieces and dice from games that are missing pieces or that are damaged (for example, checkers, dominoes, jacks and marbles add dimensional interest)

2: decks with missing or damaged cards

3: pieces of boxes games used to be stored in

4: images from magazines and catalogs (and interesting text)

5: postcards featuring advertisements (these can be found around town and are also part of the junk mail we often receive)

Once all of your materials have been gathered, there are some additional supplies you'll need to work on and complete this project:

1: gel medium

2: glue sticks

3: acrylic paint

4: black duct tape or electrical tape

5: glitter paint, glitter glue or containers of glitter to sprinkle over paint

6: sponge brushes

7: disposable cups or other containers for paint, water and gel medium

How you assemble all of these materials is completely up to you. Your game board is your canvas and it could be turned into a collage, a mixed media painting or some other kind of assemblage work. Let's now look at what the definition of assemblage is so you have a firmer understanding of this term:

"Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.

Assemblage is the 3-dimensional cousin of collage. The origin of the word (in its artistic sense) can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Jean Dubuffet created a series of collages of butterfly wings, which he titled assemblages d'empreintes. However, both Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso had been working with found objects for many years prior to Dubuffet. They were not alone, alongside Duchamp the earliest woman artist to try her hand at assemblage was Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the Dada Baroness, and one of the most prolific, as well as producing some of the most exciting early examples, was Louise Nevelson, who began creating her sculptures from found pieces of wood in the late 1930's." - wikipedia.com

Once your piece is complete, you may want to mount it on a piece of wood or a large piece of canvas board. This will give you another opportunity to add more collage or assemblage elements. You could also keep it simple so it compliments your piece through use of color. Again, this is up to you because you're the artist creating the piece and you know better than anyone else what you're vision is.

If there's a lot of dimensional pieces attached to your work, it won't be possible to sandwich it behind a piece of glass unless you build a shadow box to house the piece in. This option is recommended because it'll keep the elements away from your piece, as well as protect it from being bumped against something accidentally during a move and falling apart.