Book Carving As A Lesson in High School!

Last week I was exposed to a lesson plan that dealt with carving a book and re-appropriating it to depict a scene based on the context clues that could be gathered from a few minutes of observing the book skimming through its pages. At first glance, a task like this can seem daunting and impossible. At least that's how I've viewed it in the past especially when I've seen ornate and intricate carvings done out of books. My initial question has always been how. Well, after this lesson that question was answered and this fear I had, has completely vanished.

The facilitators were two of my classmates and their explanation of how to go about working on the project was simple yet chock full of info and extremely helpful tips on how to make this book into an awesome sculpture. Furthermore, this project instantly became a favorite when I saw a book that I knew I would want to get my hands on to start with. Using context clues was a requirement in order to choose what direction to go in with this project. An economics book titled Awakening A Giant instantly yielded images in my head of Jack and the Beanstalk and every other fairytale that incorporates giants into the story.

Once I set to work, I never really wanted to stop. It's definitely been a long time since I've started doing work on a project that wasn't required for something somewhere and it felt amazing to get direction and then just be allowed to go with it without any requirement to finish it. this project however, had me ready to spend all night to finish it. It was fun and different and an awesome lesson for a high school setting. It was highly interdisciplinary and incorporated english and books in both a literal and a conceptual way.

After doing this lesson I wanted to go further into looking at how other artists do this and I stumbled across one artist who uses more of a subtractive method of going into the books to create amazing sculptures. This medium is one that's right under everyone's nose but few have thought to actually go there.