3D Design Book Sculpture

The Assignment   The project is to create a sculpture using the raw material of a traditionally bound book.  I recommend a hardcover book of about 250 - 300 pages, with a cover around 6" x 9".  Can be a little bigger, but much smaller will give you little space to work.  You have a choice of two approaches, one carving away to create a single static scene with positive shapes, or a design that emphasizes negative shapes that change as the viewer continues to move through the book.  In both cases, the book must be able to open and close as it always could, and all the changes are made from cutting only.  No glue can be used to hold anything together- all pages must be still attached to the original binding.

A) Carve away parts of all the pages to reveal a three dimensional positive recognizable object.  You may have the book with just its front cover open to create a single block of bound pages to be carved, or have the book open to somewhere in the middle so that the sculpture is spread over both pages.  It can be a single image (as in the portrait below) or a group of things creating a scene, such as elements in a landscape.  The resulting piece should show significant depth.  Below is a student example.

B) Create a more abstract negative sculpture that changes as readers move through the book.  Divide the book into four roughly equally thick sections.  Within each section create multiple negative shapes.  One of the negative shapes should be continued into the next section  (the exact dimensions can change within the section and/or as it moves into the next section, but the created void must continue from one to the next) , but not into a third section.  For example, a shape cut through the first section should be connected to a shape cut through the second section, but not with the third, while a new shape that starts in the second section will continue into the third, and so forth.  Below is a student example from different locations in the book.

Above- book with front cover open

Below- book open about halfway

This project will be continued next week in class.