Brian Dettmer: The Book Surgeon Talks About His Work

If you are an admirer of this artist’s work, as I am, you will enjoy watching the videos embedded here.

“My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.”

Related:

Brian Dettmer’s Incredible Book Sculptures
Brian Dettmer on Wikipedia
Brian Dettmer’s Website

The Book Art of Louisa Boyd

“Equally wild and soft, the book art of UK artist Louisa Boyd is an animated discourse on the distress and destruction of analogue media. She breaks and reconstructs books into sculpture, wondering loudly with the rest of us, what’s going on with the world of print? In a book lover’s nightmares, libraries look like the modern car-yards of Detroit, empty and steaming, with ruins of pages and pages flipping open in a breeze. Where are we headed?”

More at the artist’s website. Via Hyperallergic

Book Sculpture by Andre Martins de Barros

Click to go to artist's website

 

Via Found Shit

In the Artist’s Own Words ~ Lindsey E. Mangano

“My books are inspired by my love for illustration and working with my hands. I started creating artist books about a year ago, once I created my first book I was hooked. Bookmaking gave me the chance to combine a variety of art mediums that I enjoy experimenting with.

“I am an artist who is constantly sketching and collecting images from old magazines, postcards and other miscellaneous items. I am inspired by old photographs, antiques, time worn papers and surreal images.

“Bookmaking has become a new way for me to document my sketches and ideas through a peculiar modern art form. One of my favorite artist books is an altered bible that I created. The bible is a leather-bound book from the 1950’s that I bought for 25 cents at a Salvation Army store. I went to the Salvation Army store knowing that I was looking for a book to alter but I had no ideas on what kind of book or what the book would exemplify.

“While sitting on the floor and flipping through old pages of numerous books I began to find notes, receipts, birthday cards, bookmarks and other scraps of paper that people left behind in their books. I started to take all of the left behind notes from these books and set them in a pile beside me. I eventually came upon the leather bible. While skimming through the bible I noticed that whoever had this bible before had read the entire book. I knew this because they had written notes about their thoughts on every couple pages throughout the entire book.

“The notes in the bible and the scraps that I found in the other books I searched through inspired me to create an altered book that embraces a theme that I call “The Time That Slowly Passes By”.I wanted this book to reflect the idea of lost memories, images and thoughts that have been forgotten through the passing of time. I began to alter my bible by gluing multiple pages together to creating cutouts, secret doorways, and pull outs that contained the old notes and scraps that people from the past had left behind.  Through creating this book I was able to use many artistic techniques that I enjoy working with including, watercolor, collage, sewing and illustration.

“In the end creating this book was extremely therapeutic for me. When I complete a book or a piece of art work I feel like a part of myself is represented through my imagery and construction.

“Since I was a child creating art work has always been a creative outlet for me and bookmaking has become one of my favorite escapes.”

                       

This post was written at my request to deepen our understanging and appreciation of the artist’s work.
Many thanks to Lindsey E. Mangano, Illinois, USA

The Creators Deserve Credit

Weeding is a necessary evil and I have a lot of it to do, especially in light of my planned project. Who isn’t bothered by the painful if necessary process of disposing of out-of-date or even severely damaged books? An alternative is book sculpting. I am tempted to try my hand at it, but it is  a temptation I’m determined to resist until I manage to give something up or clone myself. One can always look and dream. At the very least I could supply an art teacher who isn’t afraid of a room full of sharp knives in the hands of teenagers.

So with my tea in hand and little motivation to really start my day this Saturday morning, I Googled “book art” and came up with some wonderful results. The first click was to this blog post by Monique Trottier. There are some gorgeous examples there, one of which was this creative and evocative sculpture.

Octopus

I tried to find the original artists of this image: sculptor and photographer. Tin Eye came up with 117 copies on the internet. (I still feel it is worth posting again even if only I get to see it when I want.) I only determined that it seems to be advertisement for Anagram Bookshop out of Prague but all attempts to find a site for even the bookshop failed. So this work and the image itself will go uncredited unless a reader more informed or more skilled at internet sleuthing comes by to enlighten me.