Cutting, soaking, stacking books... into art

I have earlier posted about what you can do with books you don't want to keep, either because you don't like them or won't be reading them again. Well, there's another thing you can do with your unwanted books - sculpt them into works of art! It's amazing what a creative mind can see in worn-out pages, turning them into intricate sculptures.

Brian Dettmer's book sculptures are works of unbelievable precision. After sealing the edges of a book, he "cuts into the surface and dissects it from the front using a range of tools that includes knives, tweezers and surgical tools" (The Guardian).

The paper-cuts by Su Blackwell are just as intricate. She "cuts out images from old books to create three-dimensional dioramas." Her work, she says, "reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our life, dreams and ambitions."

Cara Barer, a photographer, approaches this art form differently. She soaks a book in water for several hours, after which the book takes on a new shape. She then photographs the book, creating a vivid image of pages that seem to take on a life of their own.

The works of Jacqueline Rush Lee are more deliberate, "utilising the pure components inherent in the books themselves, such as inks, covers, pages, binding threads, and reconfiguring them."

On a bigger scale, Jonathan Callan uses screws to combine books into a huge mass and, by clever positioning of covers and pages, turns them into mastepieces.

But if all these just seem too difficult to do, Paul Octavious shows that a book sculpture can be as simple as just stacking books on top of one another.

So... if you have piles of the Yellow Pages or volumes of that outdated encyclopaedia set taking up valuable space in your store-room, you know what you can do with them now. Let them bring out the artist in you.