PHILADELPHIA, PA – An American artist has spent the last 14 years carving celebrity faces out of phone books!

Fourteen years ago, Alex Queral was out looking for wood for a new sculpture, when he suddenly noticed all of the out-of-date phone books being thrown out. It dawned on him that these books could be put to better use, so he collected some and took them home to practice carving.

Queral has since made a reputation for himself for the uncanny portraits of celebrities he is able to find in the pages!

So how does he do it? He sketches the person’s face on a piece of paper and lays it over the phonebook. Using a razor blade, he then begins to carve away at the thousands of pages to create the 3-D portrait!  Queral is now able to do about two per month.

Queral has had three solo shows to display the phonebooks, as well as a recent joint Obama display for his new portrait:

Do you like his portraits?