Foto: Julia Strand
We've learned to treat books with respect - not to let them fall down, bend their pages or even, gasp, scribble into them! Just imagine someone taking an X-Acto blade to them and carving about merrily. Well, as we can see here, it is not always carnage that ensues but a carefully chiseled tribute to the craft that is book making.
Julia Strand is a Minnesota-based artist who gives new life to old books. She picks each new subject with care and carves it according to its strength, which could be text, type or images. Only content is not so important. After all, this is what got these books in trouble in the first place: old, dusty and outdated, they're the rejects of a trade that churns out hundreds of thousands of new books globally each year, leaving thousands to be discarded.
Foto: Julia Strand
Thus, book lovers need not despair over Strand's dissecting ways as she only uses discarded books. She explains: "“I love books. Because of this, I only use books that are no longer valued for their content, and never carve rare or new books. I’ve deliberately put down books if I think someone is likely to appreciate them intact.” Phew! That's a relief.
To see more of her work, you can visit her blog Hokey Stokes here at Blogger or in this article. Her last blog entry seems to have been in September of last year but we sure hope that doesn't mean she's stopped making her wonderful art.
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