POMONA, CA.- Books is an exhibition of exceptionally scaled artist's books by six nationally recognized book artists who have been invited to create room sized installations at the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Curated by Jean Clad, artists include: Genie Shenk, Sue Ann Robinson, Pia Pizzo, Mary Ellen Long, Linda Ekstrom, Lita Albuquerque.
The exhibit will run from Mar 9 through April 23. The gallery is located in front of the Student Union on the campus of Cal Poly, Pomona. 3801 W. Temple, Pomona, Calif. 91768. Parking is now $5!!! The gallery hours are Tue thru Fri 11 - 4PM and Sat 12 - 4PM. A reception for the artists will be held on Mar 9 from 7:00-9:00 PM. The reception and party is open and free to the public.
Books are made in all sizes. Some are miniscule, tiny enough to balance on the end of a finger and quite unreadable to our normal expectations of books. At the other end of the scale are huge books that the viewer can physically enter and which extend the art of "reading" into the realm of total body experience. This exhibition presents the work of six contemporary artists who explore the conceptual and formal relations of human bodies to that of books' scale and their relationships in space. For these artists, the traditional book format as well as the intimate, meditative, tactile act of reading, serve as points of departure for conceiving and creating large-scale artworks. These works expand the intellectual, aesthetic and sensual boundaries of books, redefining the potential of what books can be.
Books hold a unique place in our lives and in our imaginations as vehicles of knowledge, of faith, wisdom, discovery and beauty. The artists in this exhibition draw their inspiration from the rich history of books and the many attributes associated with books. Some reference the iconic power of venerated tomes that are rife with religious or intellectual authority. Some artists approach the book as a sculptural object, amplifying its traditional portable scale into enveloping environments that embrace the body. Other artists create works that reference books as repositories of ideas and information, feelings and experiences, all the myriad forms of textual communications that are generated by verbal creatures. At the heart of these various artistic investigations is the sense of the book as a tactile, interactive object, one that comes to life when we engage it with our hands and minds. One quality that unifies the work in this exhibition is the monumental, a quality that has both symbolic and experiential implication in the consideration of the book as art.
