Thomas Allen, from SW Michigan, creates moody photographs of his book sculptures, fashioned from vintage pulp paperbacks.The results are bold and stunning.
I spent hours reading his fascinating blog.
The deteriorating spine of this book has the appearance of a rough-barked tree trunk:
This is one of my favorites:
And this, great shadow:
I love the interplay of his 'assemblage' sculptures, where multiple books interact:
He has been known to lead workshops, as seen here at
If you're intrigued check out his book,
Uncovered, Photographs by Thomas Allen:
Another wonderful book sculptor is Su Blackwell, from SE London. She creates fantastical vignettes out of book pages, on the surface of open books. Each sculpture is made using the pages of a single book:
She has been commissioned to do large-scale replicas of her sculptures for exhibition, as seen in this venue in Hong Kong:
"It is the delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, the landscape have been trapped inside the book all this time and are now suddenly released. A number of the compositions have an urgency about them, the choices made for the cut-out people from the illustrations seem to lean towards people on their way somewhere, about to discover something, or perhaps escaping from something. And the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air." -- Su Blackwell
You can find some of her works in Playing With Books, The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimaging the Book:
And Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut:
