Grand Lobby Mural: Brian Dettmer

Memories of the Mountains

Memories of the Mountains is composed of 39 hardcover library-bound books, each containing four volumes of The Virginia Quarterly Review, totaling over 156 literary journals spanning between 1927 and 1974. The source material is concealed and transformed into an undulating landscape inspired by the regional geography.

Through a subtractive carving process, dense patches of text and imagery are revealed from the books’ interiors, providing opportunities for new meanings and interpretations. The rhythmic composition seeks a balance between the natural and the manufactured, the organic and the geometric, the specific and the abstract, the literal and the literary. Personal and universal references to place, memory, culture, and history emerge from these vast vessels of poetry, literature, art, and technology.

The physical book is a form of communication that is currently under threat along with the nature from which it is made. This work intends to inspire alternate ways to view the materials around us and to find new ways to approach nature and technology, so that we can evolve and innovate while still honoring and preserving the past.

First to Pass Through

First to Pass Through is composed of two sets of children's encyclopedias, a 12-volume set of Children's Britannica and a four-volume set of Black's Children's Encyclopedia, both from 1961. Each page of each book was weaved into the adjacent books, creating a strong circular bond between each binding. The primary ring of books reflects the structure of a clock, while the four books in the inner ring reflect four quarters or seasons of a cycle. The work becomes a mandala, clock, calendar, and roulette wheel, allowing thousands of seemingly random images to emerge into specific points of time. Linearity becomes circular as time simultaneously flows forwards and backwards. The outer ring of checkered covers contains obscured etchings, references to various cultures that have embraced the circular form as either a calendar, clock, zodiac, or meditative series of gates to pass through to new levels of understanding.

About the Artist

Brian Dettmer (b. 1974, Naperville, Illinois) lives and works in Chicago. Dettmer is internationally recognized for his sculptural work with books, which he transforms into intricate and detailed artworks. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College Chicago in 1997 and began his career in graphic design. This background continues to inform his meticulous approach to working with analog materials and décollaged compositions.

Dettmer’s book sculptures have been exhibited widely in museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and High Museum of Art. In 2014 he was the subject of a 10-year retrospective at the Hermann Geiger Foundation in Cecina, Italy.

His sculptures are held in the permanent collections of several major institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, High Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Yale University Art Gallery. Dettmer has given talks at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, New York Public Library, and TED Youth, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, Art News, Wired, and NPR.