Art Made from Books

August 12, 2013
The 27 visual artists whose portfolios comprise this exciting collection each work with printed books as their medium. They carve, paint, and repurpose pulp to striking effect, building startling secondary evocations from their material’s primary narratives. Amid the rush toward e-books, this volume amounts to a wild celebration of the printed, illustrated, and bound form. Subject matter and tone range widely, from Alex Queral’s cheerful, uncannily accurate bas-relief–style portraits of Don Knotts, David Bowie, Mr. Bean, and others X-Acto-knifed from phone books, to the more free-form, abstract pulpy sculptures that Jacqueline Rush Lee concocts. Several artists use print’s built-in fairytale potency to create charming, fanciful evocations of the worlds a book contains. Brian Dettmer exposes and celebrates the graphics contained in books through painstakingly precise, layer-by-layer excavation. And in a glorious nod to pop-up books, Su Blackwell’s work rises from the page to richly evoke scenes from folklore. The book itself furthers the sense of liberation and playfulness by exposing its own spine. The central message is uplifting and joyous—that a book is a uniquely precious, infinitely malleable treasure chest in the hands of an ambitious artist. With a solid preface by Dettmer and a helpful introduction by Alyson Kuhn, Heyenga (editor of Paper Cutting) presents a magical collection of paper wonders. 200 photos.