It was a jewelry box. Elegantly raised on four claws, viney engravings wound around its metallic body. Doors opened from the top to reveal shiny treasures. It presumably functioned as such for many decades — until it fell into the hands of book artist Linda Gottlieb.
“That’s so eerie,” I say as she lifts the center door to reveal a collage of tiny heads made from sculpy clay.
“Thank you,” she says with an instant smile.
I pull open the other two doors and scrolls unravel towards the floor with Rilke poetry written in cursive upon them. Deep inside the box is a pair of black cloth children’s shoes, soles adorned with old maps and stamps. Wedged into the heel of one shoe is a tiny handmade book about searching. Story upon story unfolds as I touch, hold and open.
Gottlieb and a community of adventuresome book artists — including Jamie Ash, Maggi Younger, Joy Purcell, Josie Lenwell, Sara Jean Gray, Martha Daley, Gail Goodwin, Robbie Steinbach and Deitre Cameron — will exhibit their work for the January Shop and Learn Trunk Show at the Gift Shop at the Harwood Museum of Art of the University of New Mexico, 238 Ledoux St.
A reception, where artists will demonstrate and offer hands-on instruction in various bookmaking techniques, will take place Saturday (Jan. 9) from noon until 2 p.m. Admission is free. Each artist takes the medium and runs with it to her own, often very personal, realms.
Some are like journals that you’ll want to carry into a corner and read in privacy, others resemble modern architecture. A few are made of such alluring materials that the greatest joy is in opening and closing them. Ash brings a fascination with science and years of experience as a builder and general contractor to her bookmaking.
She constructed an aluminum-hinged book with glass pages the thickness of tiles. Images of brains appear on each page with different sections colored corresponding to which part of the brain is being used while reading the text.
My fingers delight in the singular sensation of turning glass pages. “Encyclopedia of Tides,” also by Ash, is like a tiny, private reading nook. Each of its three mini books has a hard cover of brass and fits snugly between velour walls of a bookcase. Plucking a book out, opening it and then slipping it back in its nook is its own meditation.
In “Prayer for the World,” Younger uses thick church window shaped pages to display images of humanity’s dark side juxtaposed with hopeful poetry and religious icons.
Tea bags line the pages of her other intimate poetry book. Like many of her peers, she weaves together both original and reclaimed images and text. These artists found one another, and a passion for bookmaking, through Norah Lovell’s revered University of New Mexico-Taos class on the subject.
“I took it the first semester she taught it and I never stopped,” Ash says. “There’s so much inherent possibility in the form and she was wonderful at teaching it.”
After Lovell moved to New Orleans, a core group of former students continued meeting and eventually became Taos Book Arts Group. They have grown to include new members and currently meet once a month to encourage one another and provide feedback and insight on works-in-progress.
“Most of us were already in love with books, whether literary texts, children’s pop up books or art books so when we took the class it was an opportunity to put that love into something we could create ourselves,” says Steinbach.
She used a box of century old glass plate negatives to create “Albuquerque 1906.” After scanning the negatives she printed them onto a strip of poly silk and attached them to the reel on the back of an old Kodak bellows camera.
If you crank the film sprocket, images scroll by. “Memento Mori” (this week’s Tempo cover image) pays tribute to creative women of Taos, including Máye Torres, Melissa Zink, Jeralyn Lucero and Sylvia Torres, with their golden-tinted images alongside other photos, some original and some found.
One of the older photos has a double exposure that gives a young girl two heads, one rising behind her. Words emerge with a certain punch when placed within the colors, textures and worlds these artists create.
As I stand to leave Gottlieb’s studio — its shelves lined with ancient medical texts, rusty flotsam and odd-shaped pharmaceutical bottles — I spot a toaster. It’s modestly disguised in varnished duct tape and yarn wound tightly around its cord. I pop out the book lodged in a bread slot and am treated to “Toast, the book.”
“Raisin toast, rye toast. Have a slice of mean toast.”
A piece of whole grain bread scowls. “And winter best of all toast!” reads the last page, beside a slice smothered in cream cheese.
“Take a moment to really see the piece,” writes Gottlieb in her artist statement. “You may perceive the magic of it, and you may recognize one of your own stories being read back to you.”
'Belladona I’ by Robbie Steinbach. Courtesy photoThe show runs through the end of January. For more information call Carolyn Hinske at (575) 758-9826, ext. 102 or e-mail chinske@ unm.edu.
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