Light Reading by Airan Kang

About the project:

This virtual world was created as an homage to specific books that are her current sources of inspiration. Kang traveled around the world to visit and photograph different bookstores and famous libraries in order to then recreate each environment as digitized versions of the original simulacra. The familiarity of these places gives Kang’s lurid universe an unexpected and sublime sense of organic beauty.

Each of Kang’s unique book covers are modified appropriations of the original covers rather than an exact replica. The “hyper books” are then arranged in stacks to show Kang’s growing interest in the relationship between text and the imagined literary space that the texts represent. This is further asserted as quoted text from each books in LED scrolls across the surface, making the information contained readily available and accessible to the viewer. Thus the content of each book is automatically visible, suggesting an ultramodern view of knowledge and intellect that is predetermined and entitled, rather than learned over time.

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The Power of Books by Mladen Penev 

Book art by Emma Taylor. You can buy photographic prints of her work on Etsy and you can follow her blog on Tumblr.

Still life photography by Elena Kolesneva

You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey and illustrated by Soyeon Kim is a children’s book filled with charming dioramic art and big ideas.

About the book:

You Are Stardust begins by introducing the idea that every tiny atom in our bodies came from a star that exploded long before we were born. From its opening pages, the book suggests that we are intimately connected to the natural world; it compares the way we learn to speak to the way baby birds learn to sing, and the growth of human bodies to the growth of forests. Award-winning author Elin Kelsey — along with a number of concerned parents and educators around the world — believes children are losing touch with nature. This innovative picture book aims to reintroduce children to their innate relationship with the world around them by sharing many of the surprising ways that we are all connected to the natural world.

Discover the wonder-filled world of photographer Joel Robison (aka Boy Wonder).

Books by Vincent Van Gogh

Book sculptures by Gareth Spor

Spor on his work:

Often fixating on the physics of light, the cosmos, and the geometries of space and time, I work across a diverse range of media to explore the states of wonderment achieved when people contemplate things larger than themselves. My work is a means to feed my own curiosity and to share some of the wonderment I feel with others.

Derrick Method makes furniture out of old books

Love the look of bookshelves but don’t have any? These lovely bookshelf paintings from Laura Sue’s Etsy store can help fill the void. 

Stacks by David Harper

About the project:

The theme for Harper’s installation: “these trees shall be my books,” comes from William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” but the goal of the work goes far beyond Orlando’s wish to immortalize Rosalind. Harper seeks to immortalize the love of knowledge, and the homage owed to the living things we use to create stores of knowledge for all to study. “STACKS” captures the transformation from living tree to store of knowledge.

Body of Knowledge by Dana Albany for Burning Man 2000 was constructed with out-of-date textbooks and discarded library books.

Cool typography posters with a positive message from the Luckythirteen Design Etsy store.

The HomeStudio Etsy store has cute gifts for curious Valentines. 

Whatever your reading interests, Knob Creek Metal Arts has a set of bookends for you.