Art
Wear This Book (but Bring It Back Friday)
By AMY SUTHERLAND
TO make room for shiny new books, librarians cull the
texts that have been loved literally to pieces, as
well as volumes that haven't been stamped with a due
date in years. The rejected books are given away,
tossed in Dumpsters, melted in acid, even burned
visions that could stop any author's pen in
midsentence. It is, as the librarian Michael Whittaker
puts it, the book-lending world's dirty little secret.
Mr. Whittaker works for the Portland Public Library in
Maine, where a small portion of such ill-fated books
are given a new life as art. And this art can now be
checked out at public libraries across the country.
Last year, the Portland library joined forces with the
Maine College of Art in Portland for a
first-of-its-kind project: "Long Overdue: Book
Renewal." To inaugurate it, the library invited a
Brooklyn-based book artist, Doug Beube, to lecture
about his work. That was followed by a "book grab,"
during which artists were invited to take any of the
library's discarded volumes and do with them as they
pleased.
Nearly 200 artists, mostly from Maine but also from
Boston, California and Wisconsin, participated. Megan
Dunn transformed text into a spiny bracelet by cutting
pages into long, skinny strips and attaching them to
an elastic band. Susan Winn gutted a copy of Walt
Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and remade it into "Field
of Greens," a potted patch of turf in which the waving
blades of grass are lines sliced from the book.
"It's like a magical recycling program," Mr. Whittaker
said. "They turned trash into art."
The artists had about 90 days to work before their
books were due back at the library. In February, the
collection of 186 altered books were put into
circulation, and within two weeks about 100 had been
checked out. Some library patrons used them as
centerpieces at dinner parties, others held
mini-exhibitions in their homes.
The Dallas Public Library has inquired about borrowing
some of the collection for an exhibition. So has the
University of Alaska. The Portland library has yet to
receive its first official request through the
interlibrary loan system but says it stands ready to
ship its book art to any member library in the
country.
(To borrow a work, go to the Portland library's Web
site, catalog.portland.lib.me.us/. Under the subject
heading Altered Books, find the title of a work you
want, its artist and call number. Take that
information to the reference desk at your local public
library and request an interlibrary loan.)
Mr. Whittaker said the idea for the project came to
him after reading a biography of the British
playwright Joe Orton. Orton and his boyfriend would
borrow books from a London library, insert sexual
innuendos and collages in the pages, and then return
them to circulation. It was "an act of vandalism," Mr.
Whittaker said. "But I liked it as an act of art."
Orton was an early, if unwitting creator of what has
come to be known as the altered book, a parallel genre
to artists' books. Artists' books are made entirely by
artists. Altered books start their lives as literary
endeavors before falling into the creative hands of an
artist. Early examples were made by Marcel Duchamp and
Joseph Cornell, but the medium took off in the 1960's
as artists tried to circumvent the museum-gallery
system. In 1965, Jonathan Latham built a tower of
books near the British Museum and set it afire. Today,
Donald Lipsky is among the best-known artists making
altered books.
When Mr. Whittaker was not aware of altered books as a
genre, but thought his project would make for a
natural collaboration with the Maine College of Art.
He was referred to Adriane Herman, an artist on the
faculty who teaches a class on alternative delivery
systems for art.
"It was hard for my brain to compute because it was
the institution coming to the artist and proposing
something," she said. "It's an idea I would have never
proposed because I wouldn't have thought the library
would be receptive." The library was so receptive that
Ms. Herman and Mr. Whittaker had the project organized
in a matter of weeks.
As Mr. Whittaker expected, many artists reworked the
books the way Orton had, with subtle, insidious
markings. Devon Berger neutered a copy of "Men Who
Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them" by marking out
all the male and female names and all the gender
pronouns. Justin Richel created movable tabs on four
portrait plates in "Pioneers of Evolution" pull them
and you reveal these noted scientists' tongues. Gina
Carlucci attached wheels and a leash to a manual on
dog training, enabling the user to "walk" the book.
Sachiyo Yoshida created "Billy Goat the Counselor," a
play on the recycling theme in which a papier-mâché
goat sits atop an open book, chewing a page. Martha
Grimes's mystery "The Five Bells and Bladebone"
inspired Jen Haag to create a stained-glass window,
with five brass bells, a bone and a few sections of
text. "I took that stained-glass one out the first day
and hung it in the window at home," said Tom Wilsbach,
the librarian who oversees the altered books
collection.
The collection, not surprisingly, proved hard to
catalog: the cards required longer descriptions than
usual, and the artists were allowed to pick subject
heading for their works. "Candy Dish," for which
Brandy Bushey carved out the middle of a book called
"Feeding the Brain" and filled it with Reese's Peanut
Butter Cups, is listed under book arts and
confectioners arts, for example, as well as candy.
Despite some unconventional sizes and unusual
fragility, all but nine of the works can be borrowed,
including one book that was remade into a hanging
banner. "We'd have to call the maintenance guy to come
with his ladder," Mr. Wilsbach admitted.
The altered books that aren't circulating are
exceptionally delicate or are tricky to handle, like
"Inaccessibility" by Joanna House, which is covered
with dressmaker pins with the sharp ends sticking
out. "For liability reasons, we'd rather have people
look at that here," Mr. Wilsbach said.
Like any library book, these artworks, which are put
in colorful, hand-made cloth bags at the checkout
desk, face an uncertain fate. They may or may not be
returned. It's a new experience for many artists,
accustomed to the protectiveness of the gallery and
museum world.
The artists were willing to take the risk with their
work because "we want to connect with people who will
take it into their homes," Ms. Herman said. "It was a
guaranteed entry into a public collection."
A few altered books are already overdue, and Mr. Beube
is one of the culprits. He borrowed three works and
has been debating keeping one or two and paying the
standard replacement fee of $150. In the end, his
conscience got the better of him. An artist had
written a plea in one of the altered books begging
people not to steal it. "I had to send it back," Mr.
Beube said. "I don't want that guilt on my head."
Mr. Beube is also the curator of Allan Chasanoff's
private collection of some 200 altered books. He said
that Mr. Chasanoff, a New York City entrepreneur, is
also keeping an altered book or two from the Portland
library for his collection, along with the overdue
notices. He will pay the replacement fee, Mr. Beube
said.
A few of the altered books are already showing wear. A
book that was squished into a mold with plaster is
coming apart in the middle. Someone tried to open
"Field of Greens." Mr. Whittaker shrugs and carefully
places the cover back in place. If all goes according
to his plan, these recycled books will one day become
trash again. "My goal is to have all these books wear
out again," he said, "because they have been used."
Tamara Wyndham
http://www.tamarawyndham.com
We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.
-- E.M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
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