Friday, 17 May 2013

Extraordinary Carved Out Book Landscapes - Part 2

Like a master surgeon with his scalpel, artist Guy Laramee continues to carve out amazing book sculptures. Here, we feature a few pieces from his most recent collection, Guan Yin, which Laramee dedicated to his late mother, who died in 2011, only a couple days after Japan’s devastating tsunami. You can tell by his writing that he created the series with a very heavy heart.

"I was with her when she took her last breath," says Laramee. "In fact there was no last breath. Each breath grew smaller and smaller. I took her pulse when it appeared that there would not be another breath. I like to think that there was one last tiny heart beat, but in fact there was no end. Only a growing silence which continues now.

"It was a couple of days after Japan’s tsunami. Images that devastated me. I like to think that through these images and the anxiety that they triggered in me, I anticipated my mom’s death. But I can’t be sure of anything anymore, can I?

"Everything we know, everything we did, everything we think we are, everything and everyone we love, all this will be wiped out. We would like to think that something will remain, culture, knowledge, or call it 'life' if you don’t want to call it God, but of this also, we have no certitude. 'No certitude' seems to be the only one we have, but even this is a concept, and concepts are the first thing to go down the drain, aren’t they?

"This project is dedicated to the mysterious forces thanks to which we can traverse ordeals."