Last week’s video was a meditation on Letterpress printing and the book as a physical object. Continuing that theme, here’s a TED talk from artist Brian Dettmer, who painstakingly carves old books into amazing sculptures. Let’s see you do that with your Kindle!
Discussion
6 Thoughts on "Brian Dettmer: Old Books Reborn As Intricate Art"
Fascinating! I’m posting this to Facebook and sharing it with lots of my former colleagues in publishing.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes is another beautiful example of this:
Hi, David – There is a large community of book artists creating exciting works worth “bookmarking”. Check out Barbara Tetenbaum, Douglas Beube, Helen Douglas, Norike Ambe, Andrew Hayes and others here: http://wp.me/p2AYQg-QA. Cheers, BobB
PS Foer’s book is a multiple edition and is meant to be read. It’s a very intense and weird reading experience as he has created another story by cutting out words from Bruno Schulz’s “The Street of Crocodiles”. Visual Editions, the publisher, and its Belgian printer die Keure pulled off an amazing feat in producing this die-cut work. Brian’s works — equally intense, weird, amazing and wonderful –are sealed and then excavated with a scalpel to create those one-off sculptures.
Oh, and here (http://www.scoop.it/u/robert-bolick/curated-scoops) there’s Kim Anno, Linda Toigo and Josephine Stealey (who just took first prize at the Smithsonian exhibition –http://blog.library.si.edu/2015/03/a-national-artists-book-exhibition-opening/?__scoop_post=99f23c00-cfef-11e4-d803-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=808076#__scoop_post=99f23c00-cfef-11e4-d803-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=808076). Enjoy an book-arty weekend!