Artist’s Pop-up Books
One important facet of my work is artist’s pop-up books, i.e. books entirely crafted by hand, sometimes on order only, in very limited numbers. Crafting each copy is a very delicate and time-consuming work. These very special books are part of the collections of renowned institutions (the MET, the Forney Library, etc.) and of private collectors worldwide. Here they are summarily (click to jump to the corresponding section):
Steps series
Lettre-Océan & Calligrammes animés
Une Saison en enfer
Oz Fantasy
Création
World Maps
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I actually entered the world of pop-up books with artist’s books and the Steps series, which continues to this day:
For the Steps series (2017-), see the dedicated section ➔
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My second incursion into artist’s books was to put a selection of Guillaume Apollinaire’s Calligrams in pop-ups, first as an oversized full-length version of the poem “Lettre-océan” (2023), then as a 9-spread pop-up book, Calligrammes animés (2023).
More details here for Lettre Océan, here for Calligrammes animés.
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For Apollinaire’s Calligrams I remained as faithful as possible to the original poems and their spirit. By contrast, my next work was an attempt to give the full text of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell a version in “augmented typography”, where the text layout itself would be the illustration, and all in inventive, original pop-ups.
More about Une Saison en enfer (2023) ➔
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Oz Fantasy (2024) was created for an event around The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with Denslow’s illustrations for the original novel.
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Création (2024) was also created for a specific event (an artist book contest with a quote by Rimbaud as the subject). By contrast, it is a poem à la Mallarmé and white pop-up sculptures. At first a unique A4-sized copy, expanded into a A5-sized series.
More about Création, here for the unique copy, here for the small edition.
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World Maps (2024) is a dense and complex, long-term project on antiquarian world maps.
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Additionally, I have also designed and crafted several unique books and artworks as commissions.
Most of the rest of my work as a “pop-up artist” can be browsed in or accessed from the About page, the Pop-up Projects page, or the Pop’ Shop. And feel free to contact me if you have any question.
Thanks!
