clipped from www.mymodernmet.com

The Book Surgeon (15 pieces)

Update: Read our exclusive interview with the Book Surgeon here.

Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.

Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms.

Dettmer is originally from Chicago, where he studied at Columbia College. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

“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.