A new way to look at books

Sam Morris

“The Cruel Sea” by Andreana Donahue is part of the “Inscribed/Messages” exhibit. Donahue’s works link the two shows. “The Cruel Sea” is an older hardcover book of the same title, opened and sculpted to mimic powerful ocean waves.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Two art exhibits held in conjunction with the Vegas Valley Book Festival present books as art in ways diverse enough that the works could appeal to those not normally fond of the usual “book art.”

“Inscribed/Messages” features art that is created mostly in book form. “Altered States: Artists Re-imagine the Book” features art created by using the book as medium.

Rather than serving as dueling shows, they work well together, exemplifying the personal in books at a time when electronic information threatens to wipe out the human imprint left on books.

“Inscribed/Messages,” an exhibit of works by 12 local artists at the Clark County Government Center Rotunda, is curated by Catherine Borg and presents works large and small, most of which physically represent the content within them.

The zigzagging accordion-book pages of Stephen Hendee’s “Of Adder and Dragons” symbolizes the zigzagging pattern on a venomous snake, as do the elaborate line drawings that link each page.

Marcus Tracy’s “Metamorphosis” colorfully illustrates the life cycle of a butterfly in a butterfly-shaped book.

Noelle Garcia’s “Untitled Coloring Book” portrays on its cover a family without features and asks “Can You Fix What’s Missing?”

In “Altered States,” at Reed Whipple Cultural Center, 11 national and international artists have made elaborate and poetic works from older books.

The work is as simple as Emily Sandor’s Page Poems, in which words and sentences crossed out on a page reveal only handful of outlined words — “Everything he wanted to see waited nearby and began to twinkle” or “A man with olives may find gold.”

It is as laborious and intricate as Guy Laramee’s “Deux Hermitages,” in which the artist sculpted a nature setting by sandblasting a large volume dictionary.

“We live in books, literally,” he says in his artist statement. “We stack them and we carve ourselves little niches inside them.”

The exhibit is curated by Los Angeles-based artist and designer Joseph Shuldiner.

Though there is no preferred starting point, Jessica Holada’s installation “Welcome to New Arrivals: Public Books for the Information Age” gets directly to the meat with a narrated audio guide and accompanying illustrated volume that explains the archeological wealth of public books, through defacers who serve as “anonymous contributors to the book’s physical record,” warning the electronic age will be absent of such markings that lead to the “inner working random thoughts and behaviors of the human mind.”

Humorous and interactive, “New Arrivals,” complete with desk and chair, also provides a collection of books amended to play off their titles: “Elements of Healthful Living” has five slices of bacon inserted in pages and “How to Never be Tired or Two Lifetimes in One” has a coffee mug stain on each page.

This exhibit is all about defacing books. Alexander Korzer-Robinson cuts away pages of antique books, leaving only selected illustrations so that when all is complete there is a self-contained diorama, deep and framed with images found throughout the book.

Works by Las Vegas artist Andreana Donahue link the two shows. Her “Leaves of Grass,” featured in “Inscribed/Messages,” is a book of lush green grass blades made from slicing the book’s pages and spray painting them green. Donahue’s “The Cruel Sea” is an older hardcover book of the same title, splayed open with pages cut into a swooping violent and powerful ocean wave.