In a time when paper and ink are being replaced with smartphones and apps, the Everhart Museum, Scranton, will encourage visitors to pick up a book.
“Between the Covers: Altered Books in Contemporary Art” features books repurposed into pieces of art in the artist’s medium of choice. The exhibit opens Feb. 5 and runs through June 6 in Maslow Galleries in the museum at 1901 Mulberry St.
Nezka Pfeifer, Everhart curator, said in today’s day and age, people are fascinated by technology and hard copy books are being replaced with Kindles, iPads and other devices where books can easily be downloaded in less than one minute.
“The premise is how artists use books and re-interpret them,” she said.
Pfeifer said the artists specifically chose most of the books they repurposed due to certain meanings and themes and their own personal experiences with each book. They used those themes as inspiration for the art they created.
“It’s like a reveal from a block of marble, carving away the bits of the books to reveal this other kind of life force,” she said.
Sarah Tanguy, guest curator for the exhibit, hopes audiences find ways to reflect on their own experiences with books and reading.
Tanguy said she was drawn to “Between the Covers” because of books’ magical ability to take the reader anywhere. Growing up in Turkey, she attended a French school where books were the way she learned English.
“I enjoyed them so much that I would occasionally pretend to be sick so I could snuggle up by myself in bed,” Tanguy said of her first edition “Wizard of Oz” series of books she inherited from her grandfather. “In reading them, I traveled to imaginary worlds that to me, were as magical and as they were real.”
Doug Beube, a Brooklyn-based mixed media artist who will have pieces featured in “Between the Covers,” said there’s a “richness” to Tanguy’s vision for putting these works together. Beube said audiences are fascinated with seeing books, something they are so familiar with and have so many memories attached to, transformed into an object.
“(To) see it being quite beautifully tortured shows everything in the world can potentially be art,” Beube said.
For one of his pieces being featured in the exhibit, Beube takes a dictionary and cuts it, removing the spine. He then twists it to shape it into an African mask. He explained it’s a metaphor for how we can twist our words, or mask our words, either intentionally or through misunderstanding.
“For me, most of what I do always has another layer to it,” he said. “Just as books are layered, I want my books to do the same.”
No matter how visitors interpret the pieces of “Between the Covers,” Tanguy hopes it encourages them to rethink the books that may be collecting dust on a shelf.
“Who knows? Some may be inspired to make their own altered book or pick a book up and read it after leaving the exhibition,” she said.