From An Ordinary Book to an Artistic One

Los Angeles artist set to revamp novel with visual representation.

The novel Knots will be presented once again to the public, but this time there will be a visual medium that will compliment the story.

Local Los Angeles artist Lindsey Saletta worked in collaboration with local photographer, Dylan Sido, for the release of a visual reinvention of the traditional novel on March 1. Their work seeks to re-engage the modern reader with a more involving platform for the long-form narrative. The book uses photography, poetic elements, and formatting similarities to popular indie-magazines to add unexpected layers to the novel, creating a visual experience as well as a literary one.

“I am an avid reader myself, but there’s nothing cool about a ‘novel’ anymore,” Saletta says. “I wanted to find a way to bring new life to the format. Obviously, a great story will always be relevant, but it takes so much more to break through the noise these days. I wanted to give the novel a new platform from which to do that.”

Knots is a work of fiction and its storyline follows the coming of age of an ambitious young woman told through her relationships with eight different men. The narrative traces her journey over three years, from an elite university in Orange County, through adventures in New York and Japan, and culminating in her experiences within the art and fashion communities in Los Angeles.

“I wanted to focus exclusively on male-female relationships, and on the different power dynamics that can exist within them,” Saletta says. “The narrator of the book is at a very formative time in her life and she is exploring her identity and place in the world through her relationships, putting on pieces of very different lives to see if they fit. I think that exploration, though she takes it to the extreme, is something all hungry young women can relate to.”

The art-book format comes after a successful experiment distributing the novel as a 15-part email series. This art-novel format of the Knots narrative will be limited to 200 prints. Each print will be numbered and signed. These limited prints are currently available for pre-sale online at www.knotsthebook.com and will become available at select retailers on March 1.

“The idea was to meet the reader where they are, and in the format they prefer,” Saletta says. “Other industries are doing this already, so why not publishing?”

The art-novel book release will be celebrated with a launch party in LA on Feb. 25, during the Los Angeles Art Book Fair.