Why books
As you will have noticed, several of my sculptures involve books and you may be wondering why….
My interest in books is more than a physical one: they are source of imagination and wealth of knowledge; a record of what humanity has achieved and to me therefore very symbolic. This makes them an interesting prop to play with in my sculpture; whether it be a figure in awe of a large white book towering above him, a figure daydreaming on a pile of gleaming books or someone climbing a tower of books, absorbing their knowledge.
Like many people I have always enjoyed the aesthetics of old, hardback books: the weight and way they feel, the various textures, the pronounced edges of the cover and spine, the folds & lines of the pages, but it wasn’t until a conversation with a client that I considered using them in my sculpture. This led to a commission, during which I got very excited about their sculptural potential: I liked how I could use them as building blocks to make plinths or just stand them on their own for figures to interact with.