Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

Visitors to the latest exhibition at the Cantor Art Gallery won’t find paintings, photographs, or sculptures — most of the space is filled with books.

The gallery currently houses Compilation: Three Exhibitions on Books, on display through March 31. The largest portion, Shelter, comprises 66 works by 46 book artists, all inspired by the various meanings of the title word. Some of the more delicate pieces are mounted on the walls in cases, but most are designed for interaction with the viewer, and are placed for easy perusal.

On Feb. 4, artist and organizer Veronica Morgan visited the gallery to host a talk about the creation of Shelter and to present a selection of works to students, detailing the artists’ origins and technical aspects of creating such a book. Morgan is a Gloucester-based architect, renovator, planner, and book artist, with two pieces in the show.

Last year, Margo Lemieux, assistant professor of art at Lasell College, announced a call for an organizer to design an artist book show in Lasell’s Wedeman Gallery. Morgan responded with her Shelter concept: all pieces would be related to some interpretation of “shelter,” and proceeds from sales would be donated to shelter-related charities.

The theme was a hit, with more than 90 works submitted for inclusion in the exhibit, from as far away as Oregon and the United Kingdom. Juror Janine Wong, professor of design at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, selected a final collection of 66 pieces by choosing works that fit into a “unified whole,” with themes of “isolation, identity, location/dislocation, and psychological interiors.”

The resulting exhibition includes a wide variety of artistic interpretations, with examples of traditional codex books (hardcover and bound on the left side), snake books (a narrow strip of paper folded to create pages), fan books (long pages pinned together or hinged on one side), altered books (traditional books which have been manipulated into materials for a new work of art), and many book sculptures.

After debuting at Lasell, the exhibit has been featured throughout the Northeast at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Rhode Island School of Design, Montserrat College of Art, and will conclude its run in May at Wells College.

At the gallery talk, many students from this semester’s Artists’ Books and Writers’ Tales seminar came to hear about the exhibit and find inspiration for the artist books they will be creating. The course is team-taught by Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, associate professor of English, and Susan Schmidt, associate professor of visual arts, whose flag book Don’t Book is featured in Shelter.

Artists’ Books and Writers’ Tales comprises both literature and visual arts elements, with equal time in the classroom reading post-modernist texts and in the art studio constructing original artist books. Most of the 24 students are English or visual arts majors. The students were well prepared to appreciate the quality and range of the Shelter artwork.

While there are many bound books, the exhibit contains some surprises as well.

One thought-provoking piece is a map pinned to the wall titled Map of Shelter by Dr. Maureen O’Neill of Littlehampton, Sussex, UK. The locations on the map are actually synonyms of “shelter,” and farther out the synonyms of those synonyms, and so on.

Another loose interpretation of a book can be found in Siobhan Martin’s Chimney. This artist, from Willingham, Cambs, UK, created a small paper sculpture, four-sided and tapered, which represents her chimney at home. The paper is cut in different patterns on each side, representing the different noises that come out of her chimney, such as birdsong and the wind.

One must-see piece is Jessica Peterson’s Habitat. Peterson hails from Northport, Ala., and her black-and-white snake book is a timeline of Hurricane Katrina, with simple illustrations and meaningful damage done to the delicate pages.

Morgan considers this understated book the best of the show.

The social consciousness of the Shelter exhibit is augmented by an active charitable component. Thirty percent of the proceeds of the sale of one of the books in the Shelter exhibition will be donated by the artists toward a charity of each location’s choice. The benefactors have included Habitat for Humanity and local women’s shelters. The benefits from sales at Holy Cross will go toward Abby’s House, a Worcester women’s shelter supported by the Chaplains’ Office and Student Programs for Urban Development organization.

By Alexandra Winslow ’09