Brian Dettmer

I cannot get my head around the patience and steady hand needed to create these hand carved books, crafted one page at a time using surgical tools. All of the pieces cut out are removed to build up the 3D works/images within the work. Dettmer uses old encyclopedias, medical books, dictionaries, illustration books. He manipulates the pages and spines of the book to create a sculptural work. My mind is boggled, they are beautiful.

' "My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception," he says.

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of the information fades over time. The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge" '

More of his work can be found here.