Contemporary artist Guy Laramee has a talent for transforming the pages of thick books into beautiful natural landscapes and historical scenes.

The skilled excavator, who is also an accomplished music composer, stage writer and director, and painter, has created two series of carved books, titled The Great Wall and Biblios, that provide incredible detail of glaciers, mountains, and valleys.

To create the sculptures, the book is pressed by clamps so that it becomes as hard as wood, explains Laramee.

Using standard electric tools for wood carving and other techniques, including a sand blaster and tar, Laramee whittles away at his masterpieces.

"The array of techniques is so vast, and it evolves in time, that it is hard to give a complete description," Laramee said in an email. "There is also the secrets of the trade."

Laramee describes his passion for 3D sculptural works in his artist statement:

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

Each landscape can take anywhere from two days to four months.

You can view all of Guy Laramee's projects at his website.