Books & Culture
Artist Turns Books into Crystallized Fossils
Some people say that print books are fossils in an age of e-readers, but artist Alexis Arnold decided to make that literal. In her Crystallized Book Series, Arnold turns the Bible, Billy Budd, the San Francisco phone book, and other books into crystallized art objects with Borax crystals. She explains:
The Crystallized Book Series addresses the materiality of the book versus the text or content of the book, in addition to commenting on the vulnerability of the printed book. The crystals remove the text and transform the books into aesthetic, non-functional objects. The books, frozen with crystal growth, have become artifacts or geologic specimens imbued with the history of time, use, and nostalgia. The series was prompted by repeatedly finding boxes of discarded books, by the onset of e-books, and by the shuttering of bookstores.
Click around the gallery above, or check out the entire series here.
