book face sculpture ELISE Sculpture

What is booksculpting? Unwanted altered books get to new life by giving it new expression. Altered books have a story - Christine Rozina makes them looking at you. "Transforming books to faces is something that I discovered during an experimental phase in my studio. While thumbing through a very old book, I asked myself 'what if this book could tell you its story?' Thinking this thought I started to draw a face on the cutting edge, a profile sketch on the first page - and cut. It took quite a few tries to make the right width of a book block and to cut in in good proportions. Because I want the face to be fanned at the final stage, to make the text lines visible, I need to calculate the fanning grade. This means, the face is narrower when I work on it. Before I start the cutting and shaping, I make a new book spine of the width I need for the planned face. The special book glue I use keeps all pages safely in place, which I could not be sure of when using the old spine." This book face sculpture is composed of handcarved and shaped book pages, bound into a cover of fine anthracite goat leather. The cutting edges are slightly painted to highlight the eyes area. The face shows different expressions while the beholder passes due to the fanned pages. The lighting of this object is very important, it should hang in a place with daylight, or spotlight. There is a durable metal hanger implemented to the book spine.