Book igloo

What do you do when you have too many books to fit in your room? Build a new room out of books!

This construction is part of Miler Lagos' series called Home.

A view from the inside:

Add a few pillows (and maybe a lamp) and it would look just like the perfect little reading nook; I'd love to have it in my apartment! (But realistically, there isn't anywhere it would fit.) To see this sculpture at the Magnan Metz Gallery opening, watch this video over on YouTube.

Read!

Listen to books. They usually give good advice.

Book art sculpture by Isaac Salazar.

Camera Irony

I'm always fond of art with a sense of irony, and that's something Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs' work definitely has. In their recent book, As Long As It Photographs It Must Be A Camera, the pair display the products of an innovative project: experimental homemade camera manufacturing. One of my favorites: a camera made out of photography books!

This photo-book camera is not even the most unusual of Onorato and Krebs' camera creations, which include camera made out of materials like rocks, antique musical instruments, and turtle shells. (All of which, according to Onorato and Krebs, actually work!) The artists cite simple imagination as a major inspiration for their work; and when asked about their approach to the As Long As It Photographs project the photography duo says: "we're having good fun… we're curious, trying to experiment with different things." There's an interesting interview and a nice gallery of images from the book on American Photo.

Literary Origami

As a kid I was quite the origami enthusiast, and while today I probably don't remember how to make much except the quintessential paper crane, I am still drawn to origami creations. The work of a Chicago artist (named Betsy) recently caught my eye; the artist finds used books and provides them with "a second life as a small work of art."

Through complementary folds, each book is transformed into a unique, sculptural form.

While perhaps not strictly "origami," these folded books capture the same graceful energy that emanates from traditional origami creations.

This piece (one of my favorites) reminds me of rolling ocean waves. I imagine the books are even more fascinating to examine in real life.

You can follow Betsy's work on the exploded library tumblr.

Book Choreography

I have always been a big fan of stop motion animation, and this video is a fun, imaginative, and colorful look at the secret life of books: what happens after we turn out the light, close the door, and turn the key.



"There's nothing quite like reading a book."

Via Colossal.

Unique shelves

Bookshelves. Something you find in probably almost every house, apartment, and dorm room across America. Usually not the most decorative piece of furniture in the room; an item that is owned more for its utility than its visual appearance. And there's nothing wrong with that, since the books that the shelves hold are, after all, the main event. But there's no law that says your bookshelf can't be a little bit more interesting...

Not all bookshelves have to be made of wood (or fake wood-like substances). They don't even need to stick to one wall.

If you're running low on space, look for unexpected places to store all those books you accumulated in grad school. How about the ceiling?

 

 Or what about a bookshelf that doubles as a door?

 (I like the way it isn't really trying to be a "hidden door" bookcase, rather the bookshelves are just an additional element built into an ordinary door.)

And probably my favorite: bookshelf staircase!!

Here's another (maybe slightly more practical) variation:

But practicality is overrated more times than not. I wonder if you could somehow merge the two designs together...

It's definitely decided. I don't have enough bookshelves in my life.

Fantastic Flying Books

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a short film, by Moonbot Studios


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

A beautifully charming short animation, featuring a scene that takes place in a conservator's surgery, a flying librarian with her flock of library books, and an unforgettable series of events in the life of Mr. Morris Lessmore. At the beginning of the film, a Wizard of Oz-esque storm separates a man from his book. Once the winds calm, the book returns to earth, but all of its words and illustrations have been blown away. The initial sadness felt by Mr. Morris is relieved by his introduction to some highly unusual friends. I especially like the scene where Mr. Morris feeds the books their breakfast of alphabets and picks out their outfits (book jackets) for the day. William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg's film is a wonderful visual representation of the color and liveliness books bring to our daily existence.

Nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Short Film category (2012 84th Academy Awards)!

Books of Spring

Where I grew up, you could usually count on winter to reliably last until mid-March. March blizzards, and even April flurries weren't even that rare. So it's a little disorienting to be living in a place (less than four hours away!) that has a very different climate. 60 degrees in January can be a treat, but it also feels downright odd.

I saw the art of Su Blackwell featured on ecofabulous a while back. I'm always on the lookout for interesting artwork, and I found her book sculptures absolutely stunning. With paper cutouts, Blackwell crafts delicate miniature worlds.

On her website, Blackwell reveals an interesting detail about her technique: "I always read the book first, at least once or twice, and then I begin to create the work, cutting out, adding details. The detail is what brings it all together, the magic element."

With a passion for fairy tales and nature, Blackwell brings a living quality to her sculptures, bestowing a second life on the old books she chooses as materials. She has some incredible winter scenes in her portfolio too, but I was struck most by the pieces that transport me back to days of playing outside in the woods and the fields around my childhood home, creating my own imaginary worlds. While it's not a blooming garden outside quite yet, the warmth in the air makes me think it will be on its way before much longer.

Butterfly Book

Just something pretty. This first week has been good but kind of exhausting, I need to work out my daily routine for this new semester and hopefully plan out more blogging time for next week.

David Kracov's "Book of Life," a unique metal sculpture celebrating the existence, animation, and joy of books. Read more about this interesting artist and his work on davidkracov.com

Potter Art

Today I saw this cool piece of book art, coincidentally made from one of my favorite fantasy series.

Expecto Patronum! by Emily K.

In addition to being so neat visually, and I love the colors, I really liked what the artist had to say about the concept of book art, specifically the destruction-creation debate.

As quoted on Emily K.'s tumblr:

Q: How can you cut up Harry Potter, you monster, you piece of slime…
A: I wanted to make an illustration of something I loved, plus the world has no shortage of these books.

I don't know if the fact that there are millions of copies of Harry Potter in print is justification for slicing one up, but I do like the idea that an artist would turn a book into art because he or she loved the material so much. If a book is a huge source of inspiration, emotion, or joy, for an artist to include it in their work, or adapt it to become their work, seems perfectly natural.

Emily K. also has some fun illustrations to look through on deviantART.

Functional Art: Book Table

I'd love to have this in my apartment:

It may be an impractical design for a book shelf (it definitely has rather limited use), but it can also double as a cool visual display for your book collection and a customized 3D sculpture!

Papercraft

"A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas... Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story..."

In Scotland an unnamed artist is bequeathing paper sculptures to libraries, art cinemas, and a storytelling center. These unique gifts are made from paper and old books, and seem to have a tenuous connection to British mystery writer, Ian Rankin, and Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan, but no one has claimed (or admitted) responsibility for the pieces.

It's a wonderful little mystery, I think. Someone's whimsical, artistic way of thanking the literary world for their inspirational contributions to our daily lives. NPR reports on the story with pictures of more of the left-behind treasures.

BImber Books

I discovered some amazing handmade books over the weekend at an arts and crafts exhibit in Southwestern Virginia. These gorgeous mixed media creations were built by Becca Imbur.

I love the idea of books as art, and I absolutely think any book can count as "art." From a gleaming, gold leafed collector's edition to the most worn, tattered favorite copy with notes scribbled in the margins. Becca Imbur has elevated the idea of books as art to an extremely vibrant, graphic level, and her pieces are visual masterpieces inside and out.

With colorful pages, beautiful textiles, and whimsical details, I don't know how anyone could actually write in them, but if you could make yourself do so, they certainly would be inspirational journals. I have a couple bound journals that have been given to me over the years but which I feel are too pretty to write in (and they're nothing close to these), so I never have; hence depriving the books of their function and rendering them purposeless, which when you think about it that way seems kind of sad for them. What is a book without its contents?

These spectacular pieces would also be great for travel scrapbooks (as long as you have a big budget for your scrapbooking hobby--these journals are expensive), and a lot of the patterns would look very pretty under ink drawings or even watercolors. They were a lot of fun to flip through, I only wish the exhibit had had more of them (there are some beautiful ones on the BImber Books website!) I also think this would make a pretty awesome project for a personalized journal or scrapbook--I'm going to have to look into papermaking and book binding now!

Taking Flight

In 2005 a visiting artist-in-residence at UC Berkeley named Diaz de Rábago created an art installation inside the Doe Library. The materials for his sculpture? Wire cables and approximately 300 books!

The books had been withdrawn from the university's library due to their "unsalvageable" condition, and while it makes me twitch a little to hear any book deemed so, I have to admit, this is a pretty cool afterlife for a worn and tired library book.

Obviously I still have the Brakebills library from Lev Grossman's The Magicians on my mind. The library really doesn't play that much of a role in the book, but it was one of the most striking and memorable images of the novel for me (though since I'm an LS student, maybe that doesn't mean much...) But it does create a pretty fantastic image doesn't it? Rábago calls this work Babel Library IX. He's apparently very interested in this concept of gravity-defying artifacts, especially those related to books and paper. Check out his other creations on his website. (Look for the hanging chairs in Madrid, 2004.)

And one more shot of the books: