Book Sculpture Ships and Artist Statement

Not once have I had an art project progress that way that this one has. I knew right away

that I wanted to some kind of paper objects, made from pages of books, but deciding what was rather difficult. First, I made a castle, then a windmill, then a lighthouse, then finally my ships. Each object has something in common though, they are each a fantasy that the pages of a popular fiction book often depict.

For this project I wanted to take that fantasy and make it tangible, viewable, and put it in reference to the books that contain it. Instead of reading about the journey of these ships, your watching them, cannons raised high, deciding in your mind who is captain, whose going to win the battle, or even if there is going to be a battle at all. I've made the fantasy more accessible to the consumer.

The Many Faces of my Book Art

In class, I've made a lighthouse and a castle. At home, I sculpted a windmill... all made out of pages from the books I've collected. I'm having trouble putting this one together, because none of them seem to serve the purpose I want to.

I think my problem is that I'm creating structural objects, instead of living, moving objects that have a sense of adventure. Because of this, I'm going to attempt to build giant ships. Two of em.

They might even battle.

Castle Book Sculpture

Going along with a theme of lighthouses, I constructed a good-sized castle structure out of a book.

By the way, I bought a huge stack of books at the thrift store. All for a book. I tried only books with nice old pages, and big thick hard covers.

Book Sculpture Brainstorm Sketches

Started my next art project today. We're doing book sculpture, which, to me, sounds kind of open ended. I like the idea of objects coming out of an open book. Maybe illuminated with flickering lights or even movement if that's possible.

I like the image of a lighthouse, being illuminated with the text from the book pages coming through.

Here's a couple of preliminary sketches.