Artists get creative when they hit the books

Bottom line: An interesting look at the various ways artists respond to and reshape books.

We’re used to books as a fairly straightforward proposition: cover, pages and the author’s information and ideas contained within.

Artists, however, tend to view the actual material of a book as a jumping-off point: the clay or canvas on which to unleash their ideas. Book art expands our conception of what a book can be by turning books into sculpture and objects for contemplation and commentary. Many of the art books in “The Book as Art: 21st Century Meets Tradition” mimic traditional book forms, sandwiching graphic novels, poetry or illustrations between their covers.

Oakland, Calif., artist Olivia Healy-Mirkovich’s “Lucky Rabbit’s Foot” is one example of that more traditional book form. The artist creates delicate watercolor drawings of animals hiding in hillside nests or hollows at the bottom of forest trees to tell a story in children’s book iconography.

But just as many artists subvert what a book can be, and imagine the book as malleable material to be manipulated and crafted into something new.

“The Book as Art: 21st Century Meets Tradition,” a collaboration between the Decatur Arts Alliance and the Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur running through Sept. 20, re-imagines the book just in time for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival on Labor Day weekend.

Book art from around the country and world, including 20 states, Canada and Israel, is on view in this diverse collection. While some of the works are exhibited behind glass, most are displayed on pedestals and shelves, rendered slightly frustrating by the multiple Do Not Touch warnings throughout the gallery.

A show about books where you can’t leaf through the pages and read the words or eyeball the pictures? Though you can appreciate the two visible watercolor illustrations in artist Healy-Mirkovich’s book, her larger message about the brutality of the natural world is left out with only those token pages visible. Perhaps including artist statements would have helped soothe lingering curiosity and itchy fingers about what lies within some of these art books.

The small Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur space is packed to the gills with work that can be genuinely delightful and imaginative. In “Chemistry: An Experimental Science,” Alexis Arnold of San Francisco takes a vintage chemistry textbook, and has transformed it into a literal science experiment by growing white Borax crystals on the pages, which have become bloated and thick with the forms.

In “Germinate,” Pittsburgh artist Karen Hardy imagines a small flax-colored book featuring drawings of roots. That book “sprouts” long pages of paper in the color of growing plants, from pale yellow to vibrant green. The piece is a potent evocation of the power of books, to create a reality beyond their pages, to inspire the new growth of ideas and even action.

There are funny works like Asheville, N.C., artist Sara Brooks’ “Whatever You Call ‘Em,” in which an accordion book of round pages offers various terms for women’s breasts, from the profane to the silly. The book is sandwiched between the cups of an actual white lace bra, which becomes the ostensible book “cover.”

Nearby is another imaginative rendition of a book, in this case, shaped like a TV dinner complete with meat, mashed potatoes and corn rendered in acrylic paint. “TV Dinner for Zombies” offers a pointed critique of the zoned-out American tendency to favor easy entertainment over real engagement.

Many of the artists use the book form as an inquiry of self and personal history.

In Radha Pandey’s charmingly lo-fi “Taking Stock,” the artist has created an edition of 30 books, a kind of autobiography of consumption containing tiny drawings of all the objects she owns, from measuring cups to bicycle helmets. It is a sweetly modest expression of identity formed via the objects that compose one’s life. In the same spirit, artist Rebecca Chamlee creates a richly detailed book recounting her great-grandfather’s life, bound in bison leather with deer horn buttons called “The Young Manhood of Dave Chamlee.” The book melds biography and photo album in telling one family’s history, which is heroicized in the manner of adventure tales.