Carving Old Books Into Works of Art
The internet hasn’t been kind to reference books; how many of us still reach for an encyclopedia to answer our questions? Artist Brian Dettmerhas a unique way to celebrate these works, destroying them functionally to create something new. Dettmer carves intricate sculptures out of encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical guides, art books, historical volumes, and atlases.
Dettmer begins by sealing the edges of a book with epoxy to create a solid object, then uses knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve away one page at a time. In some ways, he’s more of an excavator than a sculptor. “I have no idea what’s coming on the next page. It’s almost like reading with a knife,” Dettmer explains. He cuts around images and ideas of interest, layer by layer, exposing “alternate histories and memories” embedded deep in the book’s contents. The artist never inserts or collages inside the books, he only removes, but the juxtaposition of words and images often seems miraculous.
Some of Dettmer’s sculptures look as though he peeled back the cover and exposed a little world that had been waiting inside. With others, he takes a more three-dimensional approach, turning abook inside out or combining multiple volumes into one shape. When e-book holdouts talk about the importance of the book as a physical object, this is not what they mean. Yet Dettmer’s cutting and carvingpoignantly demonstrate that the printed book is a uniquely dense and beautiful medium. There will probably never be an app for this.
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