Nicholas Jones

Nicholas Jones:

In lieu of the recent assignment given, I decided to find book artists to talk about. Nicholas Jones is an incredible book artist that does not seem to stick to one type of transformation.

                      Conch, 2006

This is a beautiful piece by Jones that has been cut and folded into this shell like shape that he calls Conch. There is no longer a cover to the book and the folded pages themselves become the cover, the ‘shell’, almost as if it is protecting whatever is inside. Because we cannot see any of the words on the pages clearly, I am assuming that the text of this book is completely arbitrary. The simplicity of this piece makes it even more contemplatable, because it makes you wonder how it was done; it can’t be as simple as it looks right? I think that Jones has developed a strong relationship with this material, and that relationship helps inform his work.

I could not find a year or a name for this one, but I am assuming because it is like the previous picture I have shown that it was made around the same time. This I think is absolutely beautiful. It’s as if he just took the pages, without cutting, and just folded them up into this incredible shape. It has the same formal qualities as Conch but the twisting that happens at the middle of the two objects is phenomenal, and it really makes me question how it was done. I love the book pages that he chose to keep exposed, they might even be the inside of the covers because it looks like he used all the inside pages to make those beautiful spiral like objects.

Boy this guy is really difficult to find dates on…but hey! Its books, and they just keep on coming to him; they have a history of their own so who needs dates I suppose. This one is beautiful to me as well, it is clear that the layers of these pokey pieces are not just random. They layer from precisely and are bigger and smaller in certain areas. The colored layers I’m assuming were part of the original book, but the way he has exposed them keeps your eye moving across the vibrating layers of these cut pages.

This one really speaks to me. Not only is the caring of the hand quite pristine and beautiful, but I think the meaning really speaks for itself. Jones gets most of his books from a local library that are donated to him. And I think this adds to this idea he is portraying here. When you go to a library, and you pick out that book you need for pleasure, that one class, research, or pretty pictures, do you ever imagine how many other people have touched that book? A book’s life is long, and it holds the records of every single person that has ever touched it, moved it, or read it. This simple piece is one of my favorites of Jones.