I carve landscapes out of books.

December 22, 2011 10:15 PM

"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." Biblios. The Great Wall.
posted by SpacemanStix (5 comments total)

These are really lovely.
posted by maxwelton at 11:27 PM on December 22, 2011

Yep. They're often beautiful. His artist's statement is kinda, well, drivel, but that doesn't really matter.

Is it wrong that I want to use these as scenery for a minis game? I can't wait to slay the Orcs of Biblios!
posted by howfar at 1:52 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

How lovely. The reverence we generally feel for books lingers in the new work. Stolen almost.

Book origami is quite nice too, words created by clever cutting and folding

http://www.neatorama.com/2011/01/18/book-origami/
posted by choppyes at 2:40 AM on December 23, 2011

That was fantastic. I'd love to know way more about this process.

Also, my artist statement is drivel as well. I just can't think what to say about my work. Plus, it doesn't matter what I submit, somebody nearly always edits it.
posted by S'Tella Fabula at 9:24 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, my artist statement is drivel as well. I just can't think what to say about my work.

The ability of an artist to talk about their work has little or no relation to the quality of that work. It seems odd in some ways that the development of a post-modernist mainstream appears to have coincided with an increasing emphasis on expressions of authorial intent. OTOH, maybe opposition to exterior standards of aesthetic judgement throws responsibility to define the significance of the work back onto the author. No more grand narratives maybe, but certainly lots of little ones.
posted by howfar at 7:50 PM on December 23, 2011