stephen

stephen doyle of doyle partners makes art and creates designs that i love love LOVE. paper + occasionally wooden sculpture; book art, book-based sculpture. he won the national design award for communication design in 2010. i tracked his work down after seeing the illustration below, which was in vanity fair last month, decorating a really great article.

i love that image. it's gorgeous, and so ridiculous, and so true.
first, his money work. money with holes in it, money that looks like a sieve, money cut into ribbons. you get the idea, i'm sure....

and now, his book sculptures. in his own words, via felt+wire:

Q Why work with paper and books?

Books are where ideas come from. The book is such a great form. Before doing these works, I was making concrete casts of books. What interested me was, if you take all the information out, does the form still have any power?

Somewhere along the line I started wondering, well, what does happen when you take the ideas out? So, I started taking out the binding and the pages and setting the words free. And I’ve been working from there.

he specifically chooses particular books, such as machiavelli's discourses, which he used for the book tank (above). he says:

The tank is an MI-A1, which was employed in the invasion of Iraq during the Bush administration. There’s a quote in The Discourses by Machiavelli, the book I used, where he says, “Those who deceive are always able to find those who are willing to be deceived.” It’s a great quote because it puts the focus on the deceivees.

deliberate, careful, and always with a point.
read the rest of doyle's interview with felt+wire here.

have a lovely thursday!