The Book as Art v10: Transformation | Decatur Arts Alliance, Georgia
Rhiannon Alpers
THE BOOK AS ART, VOLUME 10
Transformation
September 8 to October 31
Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St., Decatur, GA
Inside the Fourth Floor Gallery
How is the world, society, nature, and even humanity transformed by reading, literature, and art? What is the driving force that causes the transformation, and what emerges on the other side? This year’s annual The Book As Art exhibition explores these questions visually through beautifully made volumes, sculptural and conceptual interpretations, and one-of-a-kind approaches to the book format.
A book can be a source of stability in unsettled times. Tactile and olfactory, the black and white pages conjure emotions and images that endure longer than flickering light on small screens. From tablet to folio, papyrus to scroll, song to psalm—all are created as a concept that becomes thought, becomes word, becomes book, becomes sculpture.
A book, like a butterfly, waits and gestates to emerge and show its beauty to the world. Simple squares of paper carefully folded by an artist’s agile hands become a crane, a butterfly, an insect. The paper, once part of the natural world itself, becomes, through the artist’s hands, a representation of nature for the viewer to interpret. Through art, the simplest object can be transformed from something reviled to something revered. Something that provides inspiration becomes inspirational.
The objects in this exhibition will interpret the concept of the book and invite the viewer to look beyond the printed page to where ideas, words, and symbols are transformed and are transfigured. It is in the hands of these artists, these wordsmiths, that the simple becomes the sublime.
Artists are challenged to look inward and outward. To see growth and loss, and to walk the line between comfort and confrontation. How is the world, society, nature, and even humanity transformed by reading, literature, and art? What is the impetus that causes the transformation, and what emerges on the other side?