Since March of last year, a series of wonderful and whimsical paper sculptures have been anonymously left on tables and shelves in libraries in Edinburgh, Scotland.

It feels like something from a novel, and may in some way have a connection to the detective novels of Ian Rankin, but there is no indication he is involved, other than perhaps in inspiring a fan.

The sculptures are made from books and pages of books, and extol the virtues of book and libraries. They were often accompanied by notes, one of which reads in part: …” In support of Libraries, Books, Words, Ideas [...] and All things ‘magic’…”

There were, over a period of months, 10 sculptures left by the mysterious artist, who on the last sculpture left a note signing off with “Cheers Edinburgh it’s been fun!”

Most of the articles I’ve come across refer to images from this Flickr set of photos by Chris Scott.

Books, we are told, are on the way out — soon to be replaced by iPads and other widgets, complete with fake page-flipping gimmicks to assure us that we are in fact, still reading a book.

We’ll forget for the moment that movies were supposed to be the death of books, just as surely as TV was to be the death of movies and the internet the death of TV, and assume the pundits are correct. So what to do with the remaining dead-tree editions?

UK artist and art director Su Blackwell has one answer, in the form of beautiful cut-book sculptures.

She cuts the pages with a scalpel, forming the printed paper into various forms. Some are elaborate scenes, sitting atop the books from which they were formed, some as simple as flowers in which the ink from the printed lines is arranged to form the dark-hued edges of the blossoms. Some are arranged as dioramas in wooden and glass cases, at times theatrically lit.

In addition to her website, Blackwell also maintins a blog in which she lists upcoming exhibitions and installations.

Her themes frequently seem to be of fantasy, escape, freedom or enchantment — apt for the medium that has so long captured the ephemeral; even if the medium itself were to become ephemeral.

[Via A White Carousel by way of Sean Cowen and Eric Orchard]

When I was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1970′s there were two factions in the school, traditionalists and modernists.

Those of us, both faculty and students, who were in the traditionalist faction thought the Academy, of all places, should be bastion of academic art tradition, steeped in the teachings of Eakins and his predecessors. Those in the the modernist faction thought our values hopelessly irrelevant, just as we thought theirs spurious and insubstantial.

Times have, of course, changed somewhat; traditionalism and modernism seem to be in a kind of uneasy détente in the art world as traditional values and representational art have been reestablishing their prominence, and the Academy is perhaps a prime example of the current mix.

That mixture has become evident on the outside of the venerable school and museum as well as the inside, with the creation of the Lenfest Plaza, a reclaimed section of Cherry Street in Philadelphia, linking the Samuel M. V. Hamilton building, where most classes are now conducted, with the Academy’s Landmark building, an architectural marvel from the mind of Victorian era American architect Frank Furness that has been the Academy’s main building for most of its history.

The plaza gives the Academy a “campus” of sorts for the first time in its history (when I was there, the majority of classes were in a building called the “Peale House”, named for Charles Wilson Peale and located several blocks away form the Academy’s main building).

The centerpiece of the new plaza is the “Paint Torch”, a new large scale sculpture by modernist sculptor Claes Oldenberg.

Those who have been reading Lines and Colors for some time will know that I am generally not enthused about post-war modernism (i.e. American modernism), but there are exceptions and Oldenberg is one of them; partly because his sculptures of giant household objects are hilarious, and a breath of fresh air among modernists who take themselves way too seriously, and partly because they accomplish what I think art does for us at its best, allowing us to see the world around us, and the objects we take for granted, with fresh eyes.

Oldenberg’s Paint Torch is a 51ft (15m) high paintbrush, hanging out over the Broad Street sidewalk at a 60° angle, complete with a 6ft (2m) high dropped dollop of paint. It’s called the “Paint Torch” because the brush will light up at night, for the first time tonight, October 1, 2011.

The Academy is celebrating with a day long “Party on the Plaza” which is free and open to the public, as is the Academy’s superb museum of American art today.

As usual, Oldenberg’s work, and its placement, is stirring up a little controversy, but this is one hidebound traditionalist Academy alumni who likes it just fine.

(Photographs from PAFA)

[Addendum: photos from the event, as well as another good photo of the Paint Torch on the OLIN blog as well as extensive PAFA Flickr set.]

It is often said that architecture is a form of sculpture.

At its worst, this means that many of our cities are chock-a-block with horribly soulless and mind-numbingly boring modernist sculpture that we would be hard pressed to think of as art.

On the other hand, perhaps the most obvious and beautiful manifestation of this idea is the work of the remarkable Catalan architect Atoni Gaudí, also known as Antonio Gaudí, whose overtly sculptural buildings are shaped with Art Nouveau grace and leap into the sky with surreal incongruity to the everyday structures around them.

Someone has posted a beautiful 1984 documentary by Hiroshi Tesigahara titled Antoinio Gaudi to YouTube. The film is a little over an hour long and is in large part simply music and scenes in which the camera lingers lovingly on the details of Gaudí’s amazing buildings, so language is not a barrier.

The film is available on Amazon as Antonio Gaudí: The Criterion Collection.

For more on Gaudí, see my previous post on Antoni Gaudí.

[Via MetaFilter]

Dale Chihuly is an American sculptor who does amazing and beautiful works in colored glass.

His works range from small pieces to large scale installations, both outdoor and indoor, often accompanied by the striking effects of dramatic lighting.

A large part of the appeal of his work, aside from the beautiful character of the material and the colors and patterns within it, is the inspiration he takes from natural forms. His graceful, fluid objects echo forms from plants, birds and even undersea life. The natural origins of his shapes are frequently emphasized by installations in which his sculptures are placed in natural settings, notably in botanical gardens.

Chihuly studied glass at the first program of its kind at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960′s. He had the opportunity to work at the famed Venini glass factory in Venice. He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he later returned to establish and teach a glass program for 10 years, and cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State.

Chihuly’s work is in a number of museums, both small and large (I frequently get to see his installation at the Delaware Art Museum, above, second down) and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, one of which is a major exhibition now running at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass, that is on view until August 2, 2011.

The museum has several videos and a slideshow feature on their website. Chihuly’s own website has several galleries, though the navigation is not as convenient as it might be. Take the trouble to drill down into subcategories like Exhibitions: Gardens or Glass Series: Fiori: Indoor to get to the actual galleries of work. There are also galleries of his preliminary drawings (above, 3rd down).

Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer cuts into books, of which he which he has first sealed the edges, proceeding one page at a time, cutting around images and other areas of interest and exposing layers of pages beneath.

He does not remove or replace content, he works with the internal arrangement of each book, or grouping of books, as though it were his slab of marble, with wonders to be discovered within.

The resulting sculptures combine the found images, Dettmer’s choices about what to cut and what to feature, his arrangement of layers and depth and the overall arrangement of the books, sculptural forms in themselves, often with pages pulled into slanting waves of edges.

He is at once digging into and revealing history and rearranging its context, in a sense similar to Max Ernst’s collages, and creating something new, a form and relationship that didn’t exist in the original books.

On Dettmer’s website you can view the groupings of images by choosing a year from the top navigation.

There is a post on My Modern Metropolis with a quick overview of several works.

[Via Connie Handscomb by way of Escape Into Life on Twitter: @peepsqueak @escapeintolife]

On his blog Chris Ryniak describes himself as “monster & critter maker”.

On his website you will find galleries of his monsters & critters both as paintings (also here) and as small scale sculptures in epoxy, glass, vinyl and acrylic.

My timing is a little off with this post, in that his show at MyPlasticHeart in NYC, This Could Get Ugly, is wrapping up on October 24, but you can (at least for the time being) also see a gallery of his sculptures and paintings associated with the show.

Ryniak is a graduate and former instructor of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida, and is currently based in Ohio.

Ryniak’s beasties have a kind of oddball charm, with buggy eyes, fish-like parts and lots of teeth. His paintings, which I believe are primarily done in acrylic, have a decorative dimensional feeling to them, with backgrounds de-emphasized and the textural qualities of the, er… critters, emphasized..

[Via Drawn!]

Jordu Schell makes monsters; icky, scary, grotesque and hairy, monsters, aliens, creatures and beasties of all manner and configuration.

Schell is a sculptor and concept artist working in the film industry. His credits include Avatar, Leigon, War of the Worlds, Hellboy, Galaxy Quest and many other feature films.

Schell is primarily a sculptor, working in clay and other physical materials, not 3-D CGI sculpture. His studio creates masks, maquettes, busts, full size sculpture and other three dimensional visualizations of imaginary monsters, creatures and alien life forms for film concept design.

Like many sculptors, Schell also works in two dimensions, drawing sketches both as preliminaries for sculptures and as an end in themselves. His Monster of the Day seems to be primarily for his own amusement.

Schell’s site has galleries of his studio’s work in many areas. Be aware that most sections have multiple pages, accessed by a row of small numbers to the lower right. The Illustration and Monster of the Day sections in particular go on for many pages.

The sculpture sections often feature many images of the piece both preliminary and finished, in multiple positions. Some of his preliminary pieces have a nice “sketch like” quality, if you can apply that term to clay.

There is also a blog, on which he posts the Monster of the Day sketch as well as posting about more finished works.

Unfortunately, I just missed telling you about Schell while there was a show of his work at Gallery Nucleus, in California. The gallery still has pieces for sale, however.

If you like fun scary monsters, beautifully done with great attention to surface texture and color, as well as nicely imaginative sketches of wildly bizarre monster concepts, Schell’s work should keep you happily knee deep in monsters for hours.

Addendum: There is an article on Schell in issue #2 of Dan Zimmer’s HorrorShow Magazine.