Books inspire Seager Gray Gallery’s spellbinding exhibit

Ayush May 22, 2024

Beauty and astonishment await visitors to “The Art of the Book” at Mill Valley’s Seager Gray Gallery through May 30.

Artists have been repurposing objects for other than their intended use going as far back as 1917, when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal (“Fountain”) as sculpture for a high-level exhibit in New York. That incident was perhaps the Big Bang of contemporary art, the conceptual breakthrough that enabled artists to see potential in things that their original makers never imagined.

That potential is in full flower at Seager Gray Gallery. Near the gallery’s entrance is Christian Burchard’s “Never Again,” a pyramid of disheveled books made of madrone, an incredibly dense hardwood, but a material conceivably as flammable as paper. Their arrangement alludes to books going up in flames — a funeral pyre of literature, a reminder of Nazi book burnings and a stark warning about the banning of books in places like Florida and Texas. It’s an implicitly and overtly political piece, but also arrestingly beautiful.

Nearby is a large soft-focus Jacquard tapestry by Chinese native Xiaoze Xie, an image of worn books in repose. Soothing and evocative, the piece is woven based on a painting by the artist, in cooperation with Magnolia Editions. A similar tapestry depicting the open edges of rare books hangs behind the desk in the center of the gallery.

Walking around the exhibit, you will see works large and small that are by turns beckoning, mysterious, wonderful and baffling — such as Brian Dettmer’s “American Language” and “The Story of America in Pictures,” two reference books whose internal images have been obsessively excised, yielding visual impressions that combine buildings in the open-framework state of construction with carefully executed full-exposure dissection of a cadaver.

Andrew Hayes mates thin flat-black steel plates with dissembled pages in modestly scaled pieces such as “Contorted Volume #9” and “Paramo,” with whimsical effects. “Contorted Volume” looks as if it’s about to take flight, while his larger piece “A Point of Relation” exerts a vise-like grip on a pair of thin books.

Stillness and motion blend beguilingly in Karen Hawkins’ large wall-mounted “Mandala,” made of hundreds of meticulously folded pages. Inspired by her grandmother’s quilting techniques, her less-imposing “Jellyrolls” features dozens of tightly wound strips of printed paper arrayed on a flat panel.

Some pieces in “The Art of the Book” are compelling design exercises, such as Emily Payne’s ascending-and-descending “Cascade” and a flat-panel construction made of the back panels of scavenged books. Nif Hodgson’s lighter-than-air creations are ephemeral in the extreme, while Nancy Loeber’s “Radical Tenderness Manifesto” blends humorous low-contrast illustration with poetry.

Poetry is a unifying and recurring theme among the art books on display, a subject of great interest to Seager Gray Gallery partner Donna Seager and something she loves to illuminate for curious visitors. Poetry of a nonverbal variety is the essence of Gail Wight’s “Helianthus” in the back area of the gallery. A Jenner resident and professor of art at Stanford University, Wight has a long history of making works that comment on human intervention in natural processes, something she did in creating this expandable piece. She took apart a sunflower, scanned all its parts, then printed the scans backed with Lokta papers. Descriptive text appears on the backsides of the petals. Seager can open the piece on a table and explain the whole process.

Now in her 19th year of hosting the annual “Art of the Book” exhibit, Seager is both the art form’s premier expert and its most enthusiastic promoter. She is delighted to give visitors personal guided tours and share her deep infectious knowledge. Take as much time as you wish. Each piece reveals more the longer you look.

Contact Barry Willis at barry.m.willis@gmail.com