POP-UP BOOK ENGINEERS
The Remarkable Work of David A. Carter
When we think of a book, we usually think of words, stories and information, also known as literature. But a book can be something else. A book can be an art, not about art, but art. Starting with my Red Dot series, I began to see my books as objects of art. For people of all ages, for everybody. When Gutenberg invented the press with movable type it changed the world. Now information was readily available to the world in the form of the book. I see the book as a vehicle to share my art with as many people as possible. The thought of viewers of all ages from all around the world holding one of my books in their hands is what inspires me.
In the early years of my career I created pop-up books specifically for young children. In 1998, I co-authored “The Elements of Pop-Up”, a book designed for all ages that chronicles the art of paper-engineering. In this book, we present a palette of 44 pop-up structures in their most basic forms. Now that we had taken these structures to their simplest form, I wondered what I could create by doing the opposite, taking the pop-up to a more complex place. Over the next five years I created hundreds of structures with no particular application in mind, simply an exploration of the pop-up form. These designs were all developed with white paper, the most common material used by paper-engineers. During this period, I accompanied my daughter on a school visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for a retrospective of Alexander Calder’s work. As I entered the main exhibition I was flooded with color from floor to ceiling. Back in my studio, I was inspired by Calder’s work to start using colored papers to build the pop-up structures. This is what led to what I call the Red Dot Series: “One Red Dot,” “Blue 2,” “600 Black Spots,” “Yellow Square and White Noise.” These pop-ups were created with no representative meaning, the text is written about the pop-up after the pop-up was created. I use a limited palette of Red, Yellow, Blue Black and White, with a book titled for each color.
I see my pop-ups as a form of kinetic sculpture and a form of entertainment. I hope my work tickles your mind and inspires your creativity.
---David A. Carter
