Book Sculptures - Guy Laramee's Sculptures Made With Books

Can you believe that these beautiful landscape views, rock carvings, and flowing rivers, and valleys originated from a collection of dusty old encyclopaedia volumes! These amazing book sculptures are the works of Guy Laramee, an accomplished singer, writer, sculptor, and painter.

With advanced information technology in the twenty first century, the demand for encyclopaedias have all but dried up, leaving mountains of dusty old obsolete volumes all over the world. But Guy seems to feel that we are running ahead of ourselves with our so called new information, and advanced thinking and ideas, when he says.

“Cultures arise, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might say: so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition?”

I feel Guy has a very valuable, and valid message for the world, and he portrays this beautifully in his book sculptures. The more information we gain, and the more advanced technology becomes, it will only serve to further the erosion of our cultures. People will always blindly convince themselves that the answer to our human condition, our inevitable outcome, lies out there. Somewhere!

His sculptures made out of books give us a reality check, and bring us back to basics. The fact is that no matter how advanced technology becomes, we are still humans, with the exact same basics needs as people had centuries ago. Just as the hills and valley’s erode over time, so do cultures arise, then become obsolete, then are replaced by new cultures, new people. It’s just a rinse and repeat. What is it with future generations that always seem to think they know better?

His three dimensional book sculptures seem to indicate that ultimately any advances we have in technology, appear at the time to be an accumulation, but in reality are an erosion.