Doug Beube
Bottom Feeder 2 , 2022
11.5 x 4
x 3
in
altered book
Bottom Feeder is a series of altered bookwork that transforms a codex, a book bound on one side, into sculpture. In my artwork, the original book is, Charlton Laird’s, The Word: A Fresh and Engaging Look at How Words Enter and Leave Our Language. Using a band saw I cut narrow semi-circles from the original book and adhere the ends. They’re reconfigured into what appears to be the shape of two water species, a combination of Plecostomus and Molluscos. Thin strands are cut from the text block on a guillotine and look like thousands of tentacles inserted into one end of the fictitious species. Metaphorically, these bottom-feeders suck up lost, forgotten, and unspoken words we wish or wanted to express.
