from the installation - the lone arranger - a collaboration with laura laura Jody Alexander is an artist, bookbinder, librarian and teacher working out of Santa Cruz, California whose work celebrates "collecting, storytelling, and odd characters." Working with fabric and found and discarded books Alexander binds them up and then combines them with found objects to create sculptural works and installations. from the sedimentals series detail from a sedimentals piece miss sook's dropsy cure drawer remained unbeknownst to most exposed spines worthy - a collaboration with laura laura - installation at the Pajaro Valley Art Gallery, Watsonville, California...
The Book Planters of Do Myoung Kim
Ah (sprout) - Ah (ego) 2004 The Google Cultural Institute is a concentrated "effort to make important cultural material available and accessible to everyone and to digitally preserve it to educate and inspire future generations." A healthy component of the Institute is the Art Project, where Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to bring their collections online. One of the organizations on board is the Korean Art Museum Association and lucky for us their holdings include a nice sampling of work by artist Do Myoung Kim. As Kim's work reminds us there's a lot of life in those books. Enjoy. The...
Encyclopedias in the hands of Mary Ann Santin
'1962', 2012 "I am interested in our archival desire to create a memory of those now gone in order to promote a collective identity" says artist Mary Ann Santin. And what better to work with to realize that interest than a printed encyclopedia; an obsolete form packed with information of "those now gone"and published with the intent to "promote a collective identity." Whether she is sanding, miniaturizing or covering it in wax the encyclopedia presents the perfect medium for Santin. Enjoy! '1971', 2012 Untitled 6, undated Untitled 3, undated Oval One, 2012. Found encyclopedia covered in paraffin wax Spring Three, 2012 Artist's website
Bookworks of Maskull Lasserre
Image II, 2007 . books, frame, twine "My work is always halfway between a song and a punch" says Canadian sculpture Maskull Lasserre. From his serene well groomed and painted works to his sculptures featuring carved and altered books Lasser blends "elements of nostalgia, accident, humor, and the macabre... into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected." Here's some song and some punch for your enjoyment: Harlequin, 2007. Political ideology texts, steel Vanishing Point, 2010. Pencil on the sanded edge of compressed newspapers In March 2010, Lasserre traveled to Kandahar province in Afghanistan for two weeks as...
A trio of book sculptures by Rosie Leventon
SOMEWHERE A DOOR SLAMMED.... 2009 Rosie Leventon is one of the new-breed of green artists cropping up around the world. Her work is deeply "grounded in a sensitive concern for the natural environment and how we use it." She "sees her work as interweaving a kind of personal archaeology with the archaeology of contemporary society and the physical archaeology of places." She is all about using local and recycled materials and resources whenever possible. Here's a look at three of her bookish "recycled sculptures." For SOMEWHERE A DOOR SLAMMED Leventon created a tower of paperbacks, mostly of the romance variety. In...