The Book Carvings of Kylie Stillman

Common Oak, 2007

From the trees come the paper and on the paper comes the printed words and from the binding of paper comes the book. Australian artist Kylie Stillman brings us full circle with her incredible book carvings. In Stillman's world the trees come from paper and the birds that once lived in those trees are back nesting between words.

Pictorella Finch, 2003

In her 2007 installation Little Room Stillman creates a profound environment reuniting the trees and the birds with the paper that originated in their habitat


Lee Kottner says of Stillman "her carvings remind me of the elaborate fore-edge paintings in their distortion of the book. In this case, instead of fanning the book to create a canvas, she disregards the boundaries of the book, like covers, to make a sculptural surface."

"Her images are of the natural world—birds and trees—as though reminding us where her materials come from and how artificial they are. In that sense, you could look at the tree carvings as tombstones. The piece above looks almost ghostly when you think of it that way."

More images here at Kylie Stillman's website.