I’ve ordered too many outdated “How to Write a Book Proposal” guides from Amazon to admit and still keep my dignity.
Do I have a book in the works? Sure, along with the umpteenzillion other modern-day writers on the Internet who spend more time SEO-ing their blogs than actually updating their content. Of course, mommy bloggers have it made, with their e-audience on the upswing. Plus, kids give you good, easy material. Hell, one of my favorite friends has a rather upliftingly snarky mommy blog of her own: The Comical Misadventures of Billie Lo. Do yourself a favor and bookmark it.
Back to the book. Print is dying, wah wah wah, we know. I’m torn over the issue, too. No pun intended. My boyfriend likes to read the bathtub, and that’s a legitimate dilemma. But it’s only a matter of time until they come out with Kindle-proof water.
If you’re interested in reading about the future of e-books, this post is not about that. Check out Books in the Age of the iPad, by Craig Mod for that discussion.
But what shall we do with the zillions of existing books on shelves everywhere? Cut ‘em up and make art, of course.
A special note to librarians all who hold holy the physical book: While you may feel the neckchain from your reading glasses slowly tightening around your esophagus with anxiety with the thought of stripping and destroying books, here’s a disclaimer. All book sculptures featured here have passed my “Is it wrong, or is it awesome?” filter.
Wrong: Using the book as merely a physical object, blindly using pages as origami, re-purposing book covers as ping pong paddles and setting the remnants ablaze with an artistic flourish, etc.
Awesome: Creating a new, meaningful piece of art using the physical book and its: contents, literary context, spine text, illustrations, etc.
Books are bigger than themselves, and resulting art should reflect that.
Onward ho. E-books may be taking over school textbook-land, but the world of altered-book art is flourishing.
What’s an altered book?
A type of art that uses books as the primary raw material.
Here are some of my favorites.
Artist’s statement: “I was raised with a near-religious relationship to books. Never write in a book. Don’t lose someone else’s place. How to protect its vitally-important spine. Rules pertaining to the avoidance of moisture. And, like all observant families, we were taken once a week to the library for worship. … Rigid limits like these appeal to my creative process. I do not respond well to open, fluid media where anything goes. I prefer to be put in a tight box from which I must struggle to escape.”
A comedy writer, carpenter and book-lover, this guy take a power drill to once-loved books with style:
Education and Ecstasy
Dictionary Shelf
Carefully and thematically re-imagining these titles into functional art, I’m already racking my brains for how to save up the few hundred dollars to buy myself one of these as a birthday present this year. Twenty-something can be a milestone, right?
While the above bookshelves are my favorite due to their simplicity (and feasibility for actually owning), let them serve as a warm up for a much more intrusive book-altering procedure: the book autopsy. Akin to a surgeon’s work, cutting into flesh and blood (read: pages and margins) should only be practiced to improve the life of the one under the knife. The following book sculptures have leapt off the dusty library shelf and high school required reading list and into an open field in which they truly may be judged by their cover.
Artist’s statement: (This guy seems to be so much of an artist that he doesn’t even write about himself on this Web site. So, here’s a metaphorical sound byte from an interview he gave to an online artist review blog.
“…the book already contains meaning in its content which shifts when exposed in small components or new relationships.”
Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2nd Edition
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Not far from the oppressive, privacy-trodding regime outlined in Huxley’s eternally-meaningful novel, this naked view of the world inside its book might be a bit much for the literary symbolists.
Along the same lines, the book autopsies below pull antiquated illustrated guides and encyclopedias out of their long-forgotten abyss.
Artist’s statement: “Through the artistic work, these books, having been stripped of their utilitarian value by the passage of time, regain new purpose. .They are no longer tools to learn about the world, but rather a means to gain insight about oneself.”
Himmel, Erde, Mensch I
Valley Of Beasts, Meyers Konversationslexikon, 6th ed., 1905 (talk about reviving an out-of-date schoolbook)
Korzer-Robinson has a background in psychology and uses these dissections as an experiment into the “inner landscape” of the viewer. Some may think “woah, existentialism.” I think “ooh, innards.’
Several of Korzer-Robinson’s pieces are available at Gold Bug, in Pasadena, an eccentrically-delightful and somewhat sinister art store in Pasadena, California.
Okay, my intellectual brain is hurting, too. And the industry of cutting up books wouldn’t be worth it if we didn’t have some cute, whimsical accessories to reach the masses, right? DIY Etsy-seller knows satire:
Ironic Lil’ Handbag by MandaLanda
Artist’s statement: I love taking old books and turning them into purses. I even take the gutted out pages and turn them into card wallets and coin pouches. And if that wasn’t enough, I make brooches, hair clips, headbands, and necklaces featuring images from pages! … I also love making slippers and fun summer dresses!
Whatever floats your boat, but I dig your juxtaposition.
And because I simply can’t leave out one of the more successful, famous and intricate book artists alive today…
Artist’s statement: Paper has been used for communication since its invention; either between humans or in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world. I employ this delicate, accessible medium and use irreversible, destructive processes to reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our life, dreams and ambitions.
Alice in Wonderland
More like Alice in Bookland.
Book sculptors everywhere, I dig you. You create new meanings from old ones, and you’re good at cutting paper. I’m not good at cutting paper.
Jim Roseau waxes poetic on his Web site:
[O]ur books are decor, the wallpaper of the erudite. Behind the talking heads of news shows and infomercials lurk rows of impressively bound books. Similarly, our personal libraries signal to guests who we are and who we wish to be. If we save them long enough, they end up, like a photo album, revealing how our present selves came to be.
I’m still searching for someone who does this in Braille.
Questions > Answers
