Book Arts
Despite years of cut-and-paste work as a graphic designer in a pre-computer era, Friedman had never considered himself a collage artist. That changed in the mid-2000s, when he received a gift from a librarian friend: a stash of discarded books. After decades of designing books, Friedman now tried reversing his process: taking apart old books and rebuilding them anew. His experiments with “book deconstructions” grew to encompass techniques in collage, book binding, and papermaking, forming a thorough exploration of these common information vessels as powerful physical objects. The multi-year project eventually came full circle, culminating in the design and publication of his exquisite 2016 volume, The Book.