In the Age of the Kindle, Artists Find New Meaning in the Old-Fashioned Book

The new Walnut Creek Library will be a game-changer with its 90-plus computers, reading nooks and easy chairs, children's garden and eventual cafe.

At the same time, the exhibit "Unbound: A National Exhibition of Book Art" at the Bedford Gallery, three blocks away, turns the idea of a book on its head.

In the exhibit, running July 11-Sept. 19, artists from the Bay Area and nationwide create intricate, intimate embroidered books. They slice and dice books "rescued" from thrift stores and county dumps. They make books from ceramic, metal, felt and blocks of wood.

Try doing that with your Kindle.

For this on-the-edge exhibit, curator Carrie Lederer goes back to 17th century British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon for inspiration. "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested," he said.

In a way, this very contemporary show returns to the tradition of books handmade, hand-lettered and illustrated by artists. In recent decades, the term "art book" has come to mean anything an artist makes and calls a book. One landmark work was "Every Building on the Sunset Strip," an accordion-folded, 27-pleat photography book by renowned artist Ed Ruscha. The title says it all.

Ruscha's book is part of the Bedford exhibit, along with "Andy Warhol's Index Book" from 1967, a multimedia chronicle of life at The Factory, complete with pop-up food cans and a Lou Reed 45 rpm flexidisk.

But most of the artists will be new to gallery visitors, and many of their works are a delightful discovery. There's a child-like sense of wonder – as if, when you were young, you were let loose in an artists' studio and assigned to "make a book" from anything you found that intrigued you.

Bay Area artists are especially inventive.

Nancy Selvin of Berkeley has created four sketch books from ceramic, and displayed them on metal frames. They're full of drawings and clippings, beginning with illustrations of a century-old manual of china painting. (There are also color samples, including one that looks like a fried egg.)

Lisa Kokin of Oakland chopped up books on a band saw, sewed them closed and then formed them into the shape of a toy train. It could be the Toonerville Trolley or an offbeat illustration for "The Little Engine that Could."

Tim Sharman of Martinez has continued his "Doof" series, extending the goofy little cartoon character (from a previous Bedford show of dioramas) onto covers of such magazines as "Baffling Mystery."

Sas Colby of Berkeley has turned found "thrift stamp" books into collages including postage stamps and images from the Miles Kimball Mail Order catalog.

For her project, Susannah Hays of Berkeley made a digital projection from scanned found objects and photographs collected on the street over 25 years. "Between Cedar and Vine" is like a diary of neighborhood life: a calculus test page, "Found: Turtle" and "WET PAIN." Hays dedicates the book to all the "unknown writers of messages."

If you're a person with a house-full of books, who finds it agonizing to discard any of them, you may cringe when you see how some artists have used them as raw material – like so many bricks or pieces of lumber.

Jim Rosenau has 5,000 books at home—not to read, but to construct artwork. He's made a birdhouse from several, including Audubon's "Birds of America," with a geometric feather pattern, for the roof. He's also crafted an amusing wall shelf from books such as "How to Plan a House," and pounded a huge nail through it—as if in frustration.

At least the artists have found a use for volumes that are increasingly disposable in the age of digital material, online research, and iBooks. "I think a lot of artists are rescuing these books from the dumps," Lederer says.

Still, it's startling to come upon Pamela Paulsrud's big, shield-like construction made from the spines of dozens of books, from outdated self-help manuals to children's encyclopedia volumes to decades-old fiction. Not only had I read several of them, I still have them in dusty bookcases at home.

Unbound: A National Survey of Book Art runs July 11-September 19 at the Bedford Gallery in the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. $5 general, $3 youths 13-17, free for children 12 and under. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays; 6-8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and other evenings when there are theater productions in the center. 925-295-1417, www.bedfordgallery.org.

Opening reception to meet the artists, with hors d'oeuvres, 6-8 p.m. Thursday, July 15, $5.

Artist workshop, making a French-fold book with Sas Colby. Learn to make an abstract book in 3 hours using found objects. 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12, $60, materials provided. Space is limited; reserve at 925-295-1417.