I’ve seen many a carved book, and all of them impressive – both because of the time and effort that goes into it, but also because of my own inablity to harm a book. (I can’t highlight in a book without feeling horrible about what I’ve done., it’d be like slicing into my arm or gluing my hair together.)

Guy Laramee takes book carving in a different direction from what I’ve normally seen in this art form – take a look below:

Carved Book Landscapes by Guy Laramee

(click images for detail)

For the better part of three decades multidisciplinary artist Guy Laramee has worked as a stage writer, director, composer, a fabricator of musical instruments, a singer, sculptor, painter and writer. Among his sculptural works are two incredible series of carved book landscapes and structures entitled Biblios and The Great Wall, where the dense pages of old books are excavated to reveal serene mountains, plateaus, and ancient structures. Of these works he says:

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

Laramee’s next show will be in April of 2012 at the Galerie d’Art d’Outremont in Montreal. (via kastormag)