The first book art show I ever went to was the Center for Book Arts holiday show, which is scheduled a couple of weeks before Christmas every year. It's a way for the associated artists to show off some of their creations, advertise the center, and contribute (in the form of rented space fees) to the Center's coffers. Up to that point, I was unfamiliar with the concept of artist's books, though I knew a little bit about hand binding and art editions and incunabula. In my head, the terms book and text or story were more or less interchangeable. Books were the repository of words that were purposefully strung together to form some kind of narrative, whether poetry or prose. I knew such "repositories" came in other forms—scrolls, tablets, manuscript sheets—and many kinds of bindings, but it hadn't ever occurred to me that they could be anything but printed, handwritten, or blank and waiting to be filled. Boy, was I in for a surprise!
I've always loved beautiful books and blank journals just as objects, so I don't know why it should have surprised me that people made books—gasp!—with no words, that weren't blank books waiting for someone to write in them. I have to confess the concept still confuses me. I mean, what do you do with this clever little object by Molly Goldstrom (who sadly has no web presence, apparently), that I picked up at MoCCA's comic arts show a while back:
Is it a book? A comic? A piece of art? It's got a narrative, though it's a graphical one. What makes this a book? And I don't doubt this is one, as much as as my copy of the Robert Sabuda/Michael Reinhardt popup dinosaur book is one. It's so spectacular you hardly notice the text. But this little bat thingie is a beautifully integrated, self-contained story. It is, in fact, almost its own story. Is that why is this little bat-thingie is a book? And is it a piece of art too?
I think I've given up trying to define or explain what makes a book a book or a piece of art. Officially. Today. Because I ran into this site, home of Lotte Glob, Scottish ceramicist, courtesy of Joanne B. Kaar's website. Glob does some spectacular work that reminds me somewhat of of a grittier, earthbound Dale Chihuly. Where Chihuly glass is always about floating and flowing and water, even when it's not, Glob's work is all about earth: it's substantial, even when it floats, and rough and dirty. There's no transparency, even in her series of "pools." And then there are her books. Here's how she describes them, in part:
BOOK OF THE LAND
The spirit of the highland landscape are gathered on long walks - brought back to be fused in the kiln under high heat - transformed into sculptured books - challenge our perception of the book - viewed as artefact from the future or fossilised tomes from a distant past - the intangible and ephemeral.
This is my favorite of the lot. The pages don't turn, but there are pages. There's no narrative in the usual sense, but there is information, a catalogue of the land she walks every day and her selections of it, so it forms her interpretation of it.
Then there's Miriam Schaer's girdle books, which are as much a sculpture as a book, and Tamar Stone's corset books, which are less sculptural but still have, uh, unusual "covers."
And I haven't even touched on altered books, because I really don't have my head around them, except that I know I want to try making one. Eventually, I'd like to do a reliquary, like one of these, with a vial of Mom's ashes, a piece of what's left of one of her china pieces that was smashed in the mail and who knows what else. I have to find the right book as a base though. And will that be a book, still?
Your guess is as good as mine.
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