Diorama

2010

Diorama
© 2010, John Magnan

Presented for exhibition at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, March – April, 2010,

as part of Building by the Book: Book Artists Respond to Architecture & Design.

See more images following the artist statement.

Artist Statement

Diorama is a carved wood book sculpture created for exhibition at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia as part of Philagrafika 2010: the Graphic Unconscious. The Athenaeum, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Center for the Book, called for entries responding to work selected from the Athenaeum’s legacy research collection of architecture and design.

Diorama responds to The Young Carpenter’s Assistant, published in 1805 by Owen Biddle. Eight of Biddle’s many original architectural drawings were chosen as the source for each of the eight pages in the sculpture. The cover and pages are carved following the growth rings of the tree from which the wood came. Each page is two growth rings thick around a perimeter supporting a five-layer carved interpretation of Biddle’s image within that framed perimeter. Two more of Biddle’s drawings inspire the front and back covers. The pages are carved from maple, and the cover is white oak.

Carving wood books along the growth rings of trees is full of meaning. Books, of course, are made of paper, which is in turn made from wood, which comes from trees. My book sculpture also comes from a tree. The bent forms of the cover, spine and pages, since they are exactly the way the tree naturally grew during those years, form a sort of diary of the very tree used for the sculpture. They are pages of my book, but also pages from the story of the tree itself. All those irregular surfaces, while naturally created, leave at the same time an impression of a book well loved and well used, which is, of course, true also of the trees from which the sculpture came. These overlapping meanings add intimacy and value to the object, conjuring up feelings reminiscent of real books long cherished, as has been The Young Carpenter’s Assistant.