Book Review : Art Made from Books

Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed

by Laura Heyenga (Compiler), Brian Dettmer (Preface), Alyson Kuhn (Introduction)

Books are a work of art in and of themselves. Writers are artists carefully selecting their words, displaying them within pages of paper bound between two covers.  Some artists have taken the book as art to the next level, creating sculptures, jewelry, and even clothes from the physical book itself.  Commonly called “altering books,” the craft is the subject of a new book titled Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed.

Altered books aren’t a new idea.  Preface author Brian Dettmer says, “There has been a long tradition of art about the book, of art representing books, of artists’ books and even altered books; however, in the last five years I have noticed a huge rise in practicing artists and a more interested audience.”  He also talks about how the rise of the Internet has made some books obsolete, and altering books gives them a new purpose and life.  

Filled with color photographs of the artists’ pieces, the book is a beautiful collection showcasing their work. The book also contains an informative introduction by Alyson Kuhn about the various processes of making altered books, the different directions artists take in creating them, and other tidbits about the craft.

One of the artists featured is Jeremy May.  His specialty is making jewelry from pages of books.  The book says, “[May’s] process is methodical: after reading the book, he selects a distinctive quote that inspires the design of the piece; he then removes a selection of pages, laminating with additional recycled colored paper and then polishing them to a high gloss.”  The result is a truly unique and beautiful work of art that celebrates the book itself.  To see more of Jeremy May’s work, visit his website at http://littlefly.co.uk/.

Jeremy May is just one of the dozens of wonderful artists highlighted in this book.  To see the rest of the artists and their amazing work, check out Art Made from Books.  You can find it with the call number TT896.3 .H49 2013.

Stories to Pass the Long Winter Nights: A Review of Bar Talk and Tall Tales

Ray Wheeler at Stoxen Library

For years I’d heard stories about the stories of Ray Wheeler, so I was very happy to get a copy of Bar Talk and Tall Tales, a collection of eight of his originals, recently published by Buffalo Commons Press, so I could see for myself if the hype matches the reality. I can say, without reservation, that it does.

Ray’s narrative voice, whether he’s speaking or writing, has an absurdist quality to it that captures very well the absurdity of living in western North Dakota, where winter temperatures can plunge, seemingly within minutes, to -24 and you can freeze to death if you get lost in the sudden whiteout of a blizzard. Where the wind blows so hard that it seems like you should be able to “retract” your legs and then “ride a wave of it to another country.” Where talking bison—perhaps imaginary, perhaps not—wander through open spaces and suggest quietly that you let the prairie revert back to a “buffalo commons.”

Ray might originally be from Kansas City, but he’s been in western North Dakota long enough (going on 50 years) that he’s seen the oil booms and busts come and go. In one of his stories, “A Kind of Texas,” he spins the tale of Eddie and Lee, two locals who spend most of their time at a bar lamenting the influx of Texans into their community during the latest boom. These Texans, the only folks able to afford the skyrocketing rents, steal their women and cheat them at pool. Eddie, however, is something of a poet (like Ray himself), and so he gets his revenge with a bit of filthy doggerel, but then he pays the price, both in physical and in existential pain.

In fact, in many of these stories there is a price to be paid. In one of my favorites, “How They Spend the Cold Nights Up There,” a writer of western fiction, talking with a washed-up cowboy, Shorty, on a winter’s night at the bar, silently prays that a woman—any woman, so long as she has a warm body and most of her real teeth—will come into the bar. A kind-hearted God answers his prayer, and a woman with luscious lips, calling herself “Belle Starr,” strides into the bar and says that she wants a shot of Scotch and a story. Unfortunately, though, she loses interest in the writer, and in his story about a heroic cowboy named “Dallas Gates,” when she gets drunk and thinks that Shorty, bow legs and all, is the real Dallas Gates. At closing time, she leaves the bar with Shorty, and the writer, whose story doesn’t have an ending, finds himself without an ending, too, as he walks home through the early morning arctic air.

Ray had a bit of a reputation as a playwright back in the 1980s, and if you ask him, he’ll tell you that he greatly admires the work of Sam Shepard. One of the stories in this collection, “The Dakota Kid,” reminds me of Shepard’s plays, such as True West, in that we have a narrative, composed mostly of laconic dialogue, about two desperados who stop off at a bar in Amidon, population 14, to swap their getaway car for a clean car. Adding a note of gothic absurdity to this suspense is the bar owner’s retarded son, who perches on a stool, eating sunflower seeds (as efficiently as a chickadee) and saying nothing except “The world is everything there is.” Nothing good can come from a situation such as this one, and nothing does.

I certainly hope that you’ll pick up this collection of stories, for I think that you’ll find reading them the next best thing to actually drinking some beer with Ray at the local watering hole as he tells stories that will make you laugh until you cry.

The book is $15 from Buffalo Commons Press, PO Box 15, St. Peter, MN 56082.

Review shared with permission from Jim's Literary Soapbox