“In terms of inspiration, the title of the book is usually important, the actual design of the book, the paper type, the image quality, and then the content of the book definitely plays the most important role.” -Brian Dettmer
Books play a part in everyone’s everyday lives. They are there for enjoyment, information, and research…for most. For Brian Dettmer, books play a slightly different role, books are pieces of art to him. They are what he uses to create other forms of art…sculptures.
Brian, is 37-years old residing in Illinois, he has made his name known by “surgically changing” existing media likes books, phone directories and also maps, creating a unique form of visual art.
He studied for a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts at Columbia College, Chicago and that is where he starting developing his interest in both language and image. He started ripping up old newspapers and cutting apart phone books, rearranging the two and pasting them onto a canvas.
Around 2001 he started actually working with books and it wasn’t until 2003 where he started sculpting in to them. Eventually his sculptures would reflect the title of the book and content of the book. If it was meant to be a more scary book, then his sculpture would reflect that.
What I find interesting is before he starts sculpting, he glues the pages together, which he refers to as “creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential.” He then proceeds to cut into the surface of the book, using knives, tweezers, and even tools used in surgery.
What completely amazes me is the detail each of his sculptures posses. I would never even begin to creating a sculpture out of a book, I don’t think I’d have the patience nor creativity, and I would have no idea of where to even begin. His sculptures really make me sit back and think of the different meanings and uses books posses.
This is a cool idea. I will say however, that some avid readers may take offense to the thought of the pages being glued together and carved up. However, the designs that he creates are really unique!
Wow! This is really unique and interesting! It’s neat how he takes so many different forms of art and combines them into a whole new type of art. It’s awesome to see that there are people out there who have the capacity to be extremely creative.