At the beginning of my spring
2022 Practicum teaching semester I created and taught a lesson to a group of 8th
grade students about artist books, in particular the ‘tunnel book’.
Tunnel books are a series of cut-paper panels that are placed one behind the
other, which are all connected by two pieces of accordion folded paper on
either side. When viewed through the
book’s front window an illusion of three-dimensional depth and perspective is
created.
As with every lesson I have taught, I first crafted a
teacher’s example for students to reference.
The subject of my book is the Grand Canyon. Using mat boards, I cut out three frames (one
for the foreground layer and two for the middle ground layers). I then cut out one solid piece of mat board
for the background layer. These layers
made up the four ‘pages’ of my book. Next,
using colorful construction paper I drew and cut out the shapes of the rock
formations, clouds, shrubs, grass, etc.
Because I wanted to emulate Photorealism I used color pencils to add
details like textures, colors and lighting to these paper shapes. Last step was to make the accordion folds and
glue everything together.
When displaying my tunnel book on the day of the lesson I turned off all of the lights in the classroom except for a single lamp, which was positioned over the top of the book. This lamp simulated sunlight shining on the canyon and my computer played sound effects from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU8Z82ME1Ik
I set my book up in this manner so that the viewer (my students) would feel like they were standing on top of Mather Point looking out onto the Grand Canyon. Examples of my students’ Tunnel Books can be found here:
