All Blog Posts Tagged 'books' (36)

Built for one of Toronto's Nuit Blanche arts festival, this stunning tower of books, by artist Tom Bendtsen, resembles a nature scene complete with ethereal clouds and a setting sun. His towers, called Conversations, are mean to push the limits of what can be done with books. In this piece, called Conversation #2, 10,000 books were arranged to act like pixels or…

Over the past 20 years, Vermont-based artist Luciana Frigerio has developed an extensive black and white photography portfolio. However, recently, she has turned her attention to paper art, using books as the foundation for her unique Folded Book Sculptures. She says, "I cut, fold, and play with books and paper whenever I can."

For the original artwork, Frigerio uses…

Dutch artist Frank Halmans transforms ordinary stacks of books into charming little buildings. For his series Built of Books, Halmans carves squares and rectangles into old textbooks and binds them altogether like a quaint little town made of rows of narrow buildings. Each quadrangle incision serves as a window or door. The artist is even careful enough to include a…

The Garden

England-based artist Alexander Korzer-Robinson carves into antiquated books to create eclectic book sculptures rich with narrative. We've seen plenty of book sculptures over the past few…

Graphic design student and budding artist Thomas Wightman crafted a beautifully intricate book sculpture for his major project at Edinburgh Napier University. The assignment, referred to as The Medium is the Message, required students to focus on a theme—in Wightman's case, it's "addiction"—and hone in on…

Reading fairy tales can awaken a child's creative senses as they imagine the characters popping out of the books. With these Altered Books sculptures by Susan Hoerth, aka Raidersofthelostart, it becomes a reality. The Texas-based artist collects vintage, discarded books and…

Malaysia-born, Tennessee-based artist Daniel Lai, aka Kenjio, uses a visually captivating paper folding technique for his inspired book sculptures. Each book blossoms outward in waves of paper folded unto themselves, accompanied by a clay figurine of a man deep in thought. The sculptor's series of Thinker sculptures, echoing Rodin's The Thinker, exhibit…

Melbourne-based sculptor Kylie Stillman expertly carves three-dimensional silhouettes of birds and plants into stacks of books and paper. Ultimately, the result is a reverse sculpture where the primary subject is omitted from the solid structure whose negative space remains intact.…

Whether she's constructing portraits out of socks and sunflower seeds or painting with…

With a growing internet community and a slew of social media outlets, anonymity is diluted and nearly impossible to achieve. It's difficult for anyone to remain a mystery, especially if they put themselves out there. Somehow, however, a modern day mystery exists in Edinburgh involving a series of unclaimed book sculptures with cryptic messages. Who is the artist…

Romainmôtier is a small Swiss village that borders France. It is known for its modest population and picturesque town whose architecture is reminiscent of the Roman Empire. Like a small European village straight out of a movie, Romainmôtier holds a charming annual used book fair that takes place at the…

In all the years that we've been running My Modern Met, if there's one trend that stood out from the rest, it's art made out of books. Remember Guy Laramee, the artist who meticulously carves out encyclopedias to create incredible landscapes or Brian Dettmer, aka The Book Surgeon, the man who uses knives, tweezers and surgical tools to form unbelievable sculptures?

Rachael Ashe is an…

Could this be the perfect reading hideaway for all the bookworms out there? Colombian artist Miler Lagos constructed this self-sustained dome made entirely of books, titled Home, for an installation exhibit late last year at MagnanMetz Gallery in New York. Remarkably, there is nothing holding the novels together…

Maps, encyclopedias, phone books, and old computer manuals are more than just obsolete sources of information for fine art photographer Cara Barer. The outdated publications serve as materials and subjects for the Houston-based artist's ongoing series of works. Barer molds old books that are no longer of any use into exciting hoops and patterns, turning them into abstract…

If you're a bibliophile who marveled at the magnificent theater-turned-bookstore in Argentina, you'll get a kick out of the car-turned-library that can also be found in the attractive South American country. Artist Raul Lemesoff took an old 1979 Ford…

Maskull Lasserre has brought new life, or death in this case, to old computer manuals with his amazingly intricate sculpture of a human skull. Lasserre's work explores "the unexpected potential of the everyday through allegories of value, expectation, and utility."

The emergence of the skull figure from these books is definitely unexpected, yet seems appropriate at the same time. He…

Reading is a virtue that grants the mind to expand its spectrum of knowledge and imagination. London-based artist Su Blackwell, an avid reader, draws inspiration from the art of the written word found in books and uses that creative influence to produce her remarkable book sculptures.…

Artist Alicia Martin's tornado of books shoot out a window like a burst of water from a giant hose. The Spain-based artist's sculptural installation at Casa de America, Madrid depicts a cavalcade of books streaming out of the side of a building. The whirlwind of literature defies gravity and draws attention with its grandeur size. There have been three site-specific installations,…

We've come across a herd of book sculptors lately and, yet again, we're blown away by another artist's skilled works. Considering the amount of carved works we've spotted, artist Kyle Kirkpatrick's literary landscapes still manage to intrigue us.

The young UK-based sculptor is old enough to know of a time before e-readers and recognizes the age-old…

There are things in life you gravitate towards for their beautiful simplicity, wonderful execution, or just because they make you smile. For me, this project fulfills all three. It's a rainbow made entirely out of books and it was commissioned by Oxfam for their annual book fest 2011. According to the artist behind it, Andy…