What Are Book Arts?
‘Book Arts’ is an approach to creating hand bound books where each volume becomes an individual artwork.
A book has a double life like few other objects. It is both a portal to another place as well as a physical object residing on a shelf. An Artist Book intersects this double life by enacting the material object of the book as a creative expression. An Artist Book enhances, propels, embodies the place to which a book takes us; they are sculptures in book form at the cross section of content and context.
Books are a very old ‘technology’ conveniently suited to the hand and pocket. They are portable and intimate. The author whispers directly to the mind; the reader is alone with the author’s voice. We don’t interrupt when we read, we listen.
The acme of democracy, we can put a book down, turn away, return and resume at will, while the contents are both identical and different for every reader. Few other objects lend themselves as well and as readily to adaptation, appropriation, creative enactment as the modest book.
Whether produced in small editions, as a series of related works or as a unique volume, Artist Books open the idea of book structure to interpretation as artworks in themselves; they are creative expression through book form.