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!

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

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.

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!

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