Being given a book evokes distinctly different reactions, depending on the personality and background of recipient. Some must be still their beating heart and resist the urge to slather their newly discovered amour with passionate affection...um, wouldn't want the neighbors to think that they're a looney. Others flat line when they take a page count and feel as though they've been transported right back to school, even somewhat resenting the prospect of being given "homework." There are voracious readers who collect first editions and admire them standing shoulder to shoulder in their shelves, and then there are others who specifically read best sellers to stay on the pulse of pop culture trends, often clearing out accumulated novels a few times each year to make room for their replacements.
Somehow, books - for all of the emotions, adventure and intellectual realizations they are capable of stirring within us - end up being cast aside at the end of the day. When they're not heaped in a massive cardboard box and pawned off on local libraries and thrift stores, they've been known to find their way into the backs of garbage trucks. Surely there's a better way to make the most of people's text castaways? Of course there is, we've read about it before...artists turning books into art...nothing new, but you've probably never seen reincarnated books quite like Robert The's before. Pull up a chair and take a gander. Perhaps his 1998 wedge-jigsawed, wax-frosted Reader's Digest piece (above) best sums up his efforts to invite the public not just to indulge in their intellectual cake but also to savor and absorb its cerebral and creative benefits.
Some individuals seem to wake up knowing what they want to be when they grow up, but Robert The's path took some time to materialize. Better known in design circles than the art world, the University of Wisconsin graduate was initially torn between academic disciplines and transitioned from the study of science and philosophy into the diametrically opposite artistic exploration of hand-lettering commercial signs. It wasn't until 1992 that he finally found the medium which would achieve him the international renown he enjoys today - that of a simple book. Not any book, mind you, but tomes that have been rescued from the dumpsters and trash piles of lower Manhattan. By carving the word "THIS" into cast aside literary relics and selling his curiously thought-provoking incarnations to a SoHo gallery, an unexpectedly thriving career was born.
The shapes that he chose to adorn books with began to evolve throughout the years, with gun books becoming the next focal point of his craft. Referring to them as "a permanent one-liner that can be applied to a lot of things," the notion of creating something desirable with tactile appeal out of what was once treasured and then thoughtlessly discarded at the end of its perceived life really appealed to him. Imagine moving onto a noose dictionary...perhaps a metaphor for how some people feel about learning? Or being the impetus for creepy crawly insects leaping to life from the pages of a text - one gets the feeling that this artist is perhaps a little on the not-quite-right side, but he clearly knows exactly what he's doing. Creating new, slick, slightly warped alter-egos for books that led a former life as the not-exactly-cool-kid-in-school, he manages to endow his subjects with that "it" factor that compels us to step away from the garbage can...instead leaving them right there on our coffee tables where they belong.
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