live in a small town.
--- Tamara Wyndham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> New York Times: April 23, 2006
> 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."
>
>
=== message truncated ===
http://www.picturetrail.com/lavonasherarts
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