What do you do with out-of-date law books?
While that may sound like a lead up to a bad lawyer joke, if you’re a member of the Claresholm Artists and Artisans Club, you turn it into a work of art.
A handful of these books, which include altered, mixed-media books by former Canmore artists Win Dinn and Alice Saltiel-Marshall, are now on display as part of Turning the Page, this year’s exhibition of artist books at Sunny Raven Gallery on Elk Run Boulevard.
This is the fourth year Sunny Raven has hosted this exhibition and gallery owner Meg Nicks said both the show and art books continue to gain in popularity.
Nicks said Monday (July 22) Turning the Page was one of three stops, along with the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and The Banff Centre, for a tour during the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild conference in Calgary earlier this month.
“As we get more established, this is the fourth time, there’s more people starting to look for it and look at it,” said Nicks. “There’s more credibility to it for artists.”
A few of the approximately 27 books are for sale, but most, Nicks said, are done as a personal statement.
“It’s really neat because of the non-commercial aspect of a lot of these, they become much more of a personal statement, but they are also really time consuming,” she said.
The style of books in Turning the Page is extensive, ranging from travel journals to books of photographs to some that are more sculptural. A few of these books are whimsical, while others are serious.
One of the most unique books in this show of unique books is The Art of Vermiculture by Claresholm artist Kerry Hart. This altered book, one of the law books provided by Dinn to the CAAC, is riddled with wormholes complete with lifelike rubber worms emerging from the holes.
Next year, Nicks said she’s thinking of having participating artists create work that fits within a theme that in some manner considers ideas of “recovery” that could address the June flood and health issues in general and how art can help the healing process.
The idea grew from one of the artists with books in Turning the Page who explored art as therapy.
“I started thinking about it and then the flood happened and I know some artists who had their studios inundated, and at least a couple of people in Exshaw,” Nicks said. “And just the whole undercurrent, there’s an undercurrent that people have or feel. They may not express it, but I think there’s an unease that will be under the surface for a long time and so we’d be trying to address that creatively as a way of processing what has happened.”
Even though interest in Sunny Raven’s annual art book show is growing, Nicks said she has no plans to take it out of the store and gallery as the smaller, more intimate venue fits better with how most of the artists tend to approach their altered and hand-made books as a way to express themselves.
Other artists exhibiting in Turning the Page include Carole Harmon, Dea Fischer, Barbara Belyea, Christine Thorpe, Angélique Gilespe and Jocey Asnong.
