This exhibit is presented by YingYang Zhang. Born and raised in KaiPing, China, then moved to New York where he now lives and studies. Tom Phillips, a British artist who began creating altered books called Humument at 1966. He altered every pages of a second-hand book by painting, collage and cut-up techniques. Phillips already published five versions of Humument. Yang combinded the concepts of Phillips’ Humument and what he learned from Graphic design principle 1100 and English 1101 to create his own Humument. The book Yang used is Of Mice and Men. The book is about George and Lennie’s ambition of owning their own ranch, and the obstacles that stand in the way of that ambition, reveal the nature of dreams, loneliness, and sacrifice. Yang really like those themes that revealed from that book, because he understands that if you want to make your dream comes ture, you must experience lonliness and sacrifice. Outside the book, Yang also came up with another theme that relate to dream—-freedom. Yang has lived in China for 16 years. He has seen many people’s dream being limited since they were children. In China, getting a good grade is more important than almost everything. Some parents would force their kids to study very hard. They don’t even have the freedom to do what they want, not to speak of their dream. Yang feels regret for those children, so he decided to create these themes in three different pages for his Humument. To create the pages, Yang used X-Acto knife, black bristol, glue, No. 6H pencil and black big brush. For the first page, Yang named it Route of Dreams. It represents Of Mice and Men’s themes of dreams and loneliness, Yang used an X-Acto knife to cut out shapes of a dark cloud, lightning, and a bird from black bristol, then glued them on the page to create the obvious composition. The dark cloud and the lightning stand for the obstacles of our dreams, and the bird is used to represent loneliness. On the way to achieve our dreams, we would encounter situations that no body could help, we have to go through it by ourself. We might feel lonely, but we have to get used it. The second page is called Broken. It represents Of Mice and Men’s theme of sacrifice, Yang used a No. 6H pencil and a black big brush to create the concept of pattern. Yang used the No.6H pencil to draw the shape of the pattern, then filled it with the black big brush.  The irregular lines staggered together makes it look like a broken mirror, represent the idea of sacrifice. In order to achieve our dreams, sometimes we might need to do some sacrifices. We might need to sacrifice our time, money, hobby, or mate. Yang believes all the sacrifices would be worth at the end. For the third page, Yang called it Freedom. He used a No. 6H pencil and a black big brush to create the concept of overlap. Yang first used the No.6H pencil to draw the outline, then filled it with the black big brush. In this page, you only see part of the heart. And the heart is separating in birds shape. Presenting the idea of freedom. Yang wants to appeal some parents not to limit their kids, let them be what they want to be.

This exhibit is presented by Xingfu, Ye. Xingfu was born and raise up in Zhejiang, China. Then he moved to New York where now he live. Xingfu is a student of New York City College of Technology whose major is graphic design. He get inspired by a British artist Tom Phillips’ recreation “The Humument”. “The Humument” was first publish in 1970, it was a recreation of W H Mallock’s Novel  “A Human Document”, and the name “The Humument” was come from the original novel name. Tom Phillips took out “an” from the word human, and “Doc” from document, then he put two words together become Humument. The purpose of this is to recreate a different theme and story of a book to let reader have a different exprience of reading the original book and recreated version of the book. Alice Taylor’s novel House of Memories is a story of resilience in the face of family tragedy. Xingfu have recreates few pages of House of Memories with different theme, his favorite three pages are “Great Position”, “Death and life”, and “Twisted space” In first page, Xingfu try to convey a great postion, so he used Ruler, Pigma Micron 05, and PITT artist Big brush to draw lines and solid bridges to support the center. The idea was come from the text where he found the words “Great position”. He is trying to explain that how a great position is like, a great position is where the surrounds are supporting one area to make it a great position. For this page, if views did not see the word great position, they might be confuse and not understanding about this page. In the second page, Xingfu try to convey life and death, he also used Ruler, Pigma Micron 05, and PITT artist Big brush to drew circles and line taps, half of which were filled in with black ink and the other half left blank. The idea was came from the text, the words “dead,” and “live”. Xingfu is trying to express that live and death are so close. The lines was drawn twisted, because he wants to show that life is difficult so is death. Viewers might confuse about the circles, Xingfu said he drew circles was trying to represent spirit, but he did not write in the description, because he think the circles could also represent as events that makes how the life is going to be, different person has different views. In the third page, Xingfu drew a snake goes in circle like a sea shield, this is trying to convey Twisted space. Xingfu said this is trying to express how he thinks a twisted space look like, a twisted space in his mind is like a space that everything is twisted and has no end. In this page, viewers might think that this drawing look like a portal, Xingfu also had a thought about that, however he thinks inside of the portal there must be another space, and that space is just like what he have described. Xingfu’s recreations give readers a different point of view of the original novel. From a resilience in the face of family tragedy story to a science fiction story. Each page contains a small message about the new theme of the story.