Artist Cara Barer Creates Artful Books By Curling And Rolling Their Pages

Cara Barer is a book artist who prepares books to be used as art objects. Using a sewing machine, she creates soft sculptures out of books that preserve the historical and literary material within the text while de-sanitizing its material form.

Her work explores the intersection of books with other materials and technologies, investigating the changing nature of recorded history in a digital world. She has previously written about the topics of innovation in sculpture, art objects entering the public sphere, and uses of found photography.

Cara Barer Turns Books Into Colorful Sculptures

Cara Barer’s art is inspired by the natural world, and she uses books as her canvas. She curls and rolls pages into sculptures that add a colorful dimension to bound tomes. Barer dyes, shreds, and submerges vintage encyclopedias or instruction manuals in water to distort the typically compact publications.

With cracked spins and crinkled pages, the manipulated objects reference the relationship between the natural and human-made as they evoke flowers at peak bloom.

The future of books is in question. They hold intimate details that might otherwise be forgotten. “The books I create are useful as art objects – unique pieces that last long after their physical form has disintegrated or been discarded.”

Artist Curls, Rolls, And Dyes Her Way To A Series Of Amazing Paper Sculptures

While the shapes and dimensions of colorful books have been reimagined in a myriad of crafts and DIY projects, Barer’s work is particularly eye-catching due to her advanced methods.

Barer Art uses dead books to create sculptures that are full of life. Her work is often pixelated, and colorful, and celebrates creative destruction. She sometimes reuses books by dyeing their pages and cutting out the parts she wants to use in her art.

Barer uses advanced methods to dye the books in vibrant hues then or apply them to her sculptures. Then or after, she uses whimsical patterns to shred into aged journals. In LA and Toronto, galleries hold her book sculpture endeavors because of her choice of colorful books with advanced methods.

Barer also creates wall installations where she has stacked books on top of each other like a pile of pancakes or stacked them into towers. With books like these, it’s easy to see why her book sculpture endeavors have earned her a place in galleries from Los Angeles to Toronto.

Barer’s contorted works are inspired by nature—each piece has a sense of movement and growth. Her work can be seen on her site and Instagram.

Cara Barer

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