Reading Between the Lines: A Book Art Extravaganza

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Book Art Extravaganza

Even though books are art in and of themselves, it's become quite the trend to turn this readable art form into something purely aesthetic. (And YA author and reality TV star Lauren Conrad used them for more "practical" purposes, to much controversy.)

Scottish artist Georgia Russell removes and uses the pages of books to create her artistic visions:

Artist: Georgia Russel

Other artists, like Robert The, turn a single book into a carved-out sculpture that doesn't look at all like a book:

Artist: Robert The

While Brian Dettmer carves elaborate scenes into the pages of books:

Artist: Brian Dettmer

There there's photographer Cara Barer who manipulates pages into a book-like sculpture:

Artist: Cara Barer

And yet other artists (Su Blackwell, for one) create pop-up scenes within the pages of a bound book (my personal fave):

Artist: Su Blackwell


Artist: Unknown


Artist: Unknown

Artist: Unknown

These are all versions of book art I had seen before. But just this week, a friend of mine introduced me to a new style of carvings. Specifically those of artist Guy Laramee.

Now, Laramee's unique carvings aren't like the ones by Robert The or Brian Dettmer, where they take a single book and work their magic. Instead, Laramee takes multiple books and carves and paints landscapes along the top edge:

Artist: Guy Laramee

Laramee, naturally, explores the single book art form as well:

Artist: Guy Laramee

But there's something about his pieces that feels very different to me than anything else I've seen before in the book-art family. He takes a man-made book and turns it into something that feels truly of nature, an intriguing dichotomy, I think. But Laramee himself has an even more complex reasoning behind his art, that of the expression of cultural erosion over time, particularly now as the book itself is gaining recognition as a "dying art."

In his Artist Statement he says:

Cultures emerge, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might ask so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition? And even if we could change the content of all the books on earth, would this change anything in relation to the domination of analytical knowledge over intuitive knowledge? What is it in ourselves that insists on grabbing, on casting the flow of experience into concepts?

[...]

My work, in 3D as well as in painting, originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation.

[...]

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

After 30 years of practice, the only thing I still wish my art to do is this: to project us into this thick “cloud of unknowing.”

See Laramee's full Artist's Statement HERE

An interesting concept, no? :)

Be sure to check out his projects on his website, complete with further explanations (and sometimes poetry) about his specific purpose in creating each collection. (My favorite is The Great Wall.)