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Covers as Canvas: the Art of Mike Stilkey

JA December 20

Mike Stilkey, an artist based in Los Angeles, has found a unique way to deface his library. Using a mix of ink, pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey paints on the covers and spines and then stacks the books together to form some pretty striking compositions.

He explained how he got started in an interview with Dave Kinsey:

It was sort of an accident. I was painting on book pages for forever, and actually published a book in 2005 titled "100 Portraits" in which I drew one hundred portraits on old book pages. At the time, I was drawing on books, records or anything else I could find at a thrift store. Eventually, I started drawing on the books themselves. I was going to do a project where I just drew on the covers of the books, and as I finished them I would stack them against the wall. It dawned on me that it might be a good idea to paint down the spines of the books instead of just on the covers.

When asked what his books-for-painting to books-for-reading ratio was by the New Yorker’s Book Bench, Stilkey answered that he had about five hundred to a thousand discarded books for painting. Otherwise, he was also a dedicated fan of Bukowski, and one of his pieces include a portrait of the novelist.

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