Cerritos Library Book Arts Collection

Video Script

VIDEO AUDIOCerritos Library exterior: MUSIC: (Optional)Library montage: Exterior, Main Street, Children’s, Old World Reading Room, Teen Studio, Skyline

The Cerritos Library provides an experience where spatial elements and material collections stimulate curiosity.

Shots of artwork located throughout the library: Main Street, World Traditions, 21st, Third Floor

When planning the world class facility, City officials gave special consideration to building a collection of artwork to bridge learning and creativity. Upon entry, visitors are able to view numerous works of art throughout the building’s themed spaces.

Footage of some of the Arts books collection: Old World, Areas of Skyline

In order to further demonstrate the importance of art and learning, a special book arts collection was developed for the Library in 2002.

More examples of art books from Skyline

Art books are specially designed, bound and crafted works that are often created as single editions or as limited series.

Continued Art books have a variety of forms including scrolls, fold-outs, concertinas, and other varieties.

Book arts group interacting with the collection

Selections from the Library’s rotating exhibition include several of these forms.

The Cerritos Library’s book arts collection features works by various local artists.

Question 1: What interests you about Book Arts?

These artists were recently interviewed to speak about their art.

Answer Sue Ann: What interests me

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about book arts is that they are a very intimate art form.

(OS) Shot of Sue Ann’s book from the collection

Answer Sue Ann: They’re really intended to have a viewer and the artist, that’s a hand-held object. I found working in museums, and I’ve worked in museums for a long time, that people will scan the gallery, they’ll look at a painting for maybe a few minutes, at most, whereas with a book, people are ready to hold it, look at it, spend a little time with it.

Interview footage of Sue Ann And I think that’s the thing that’s most important for me. That people have a time and place for contemplation. Other than that, it’s the idea of handling things and the texture of the paper, of the cover, I think there’s a real important quality and tactile, sensual experience with books.I was in graduate school at Columbia and I came across this book, “An Annotated Topography of Chance”. It really represents the thing I love about the possibilities of the book arts. All this is, is a schematic of his breakfast table and each object is numbered, and then he writes about it. The whole book is just based on these objects and I realized that the whole notion of the innocence of objects, the whole notion of collections of things we attach stories to them. That was one way of moving into the book arts.

Question 1 Answer Charlene: I got started accidentally, I was taking classes in book repair. I do fix and repair books, I love book repair. (jump cut) I am self taught. I took classes but I’m not trained by anybody. When I started there really wasn’t anything around.

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(OS) Shot of Charlene’s book I get to make all of these really cool books. Once in a while I even sell one. It’s incredible. My book art is like a whole other side of me, it’s like a whole other person. It’s actually a way to go somewhere else, be someone else.

Question 1 Answer Sybil: I began working in artists’ books I guess it was about twenty years ago. I began making hand-painted quilts. When my eldest son went to college someone told me about a course called artists’ books that was being offered at the local community college. Although I had no idea what it was, I thought that I could learn how to archive my photos. When I went I found out there was an incredible world out there that I had no idea about called artists’ books. That the art is in the form of a book. I realized this world of artists’ books was a culmination of all the things I was doing in my life. All of a sudden there was this receptacle for all the things that had occurred in my life.

Question 2 How do you begin a project? Give viewers a sense of the process.

Answer Charlene: I generally see something or read something or someone says something to me beyond the normal. I have the tendency to photograph weird things and clip out weird sentences. I start putting things into a box. The first thing I do is make the insides of the book. That means I’ve got to cut up some pictures and write something.

Question 2 (OS) Overlay images of her and her boxes.

Charlene cont’d: I usually start in the middle of the book and expand out. When I think I have the gist of the book I start to think about the covers and what kind of binding to make. Then I start collecting bits of cloth and pieces of things and

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putting them in my box. Then I sew up the book.

Question 2 Answer Sue Ann: Quercus Psalter, which is in the Cerritos Library collection is a good example of how to begin a project. I work usually in series, so I’ll find a theme that I’m interested in and that usually builds into a number of projects. In this case I was commissioned to do an insert for the Hudson Valley News, in New York. It was just a one page thing to put in the newspaper and I thought, what do New York state and California have in common?

Question 2 (OS) Overlay images of Sue Ann in her studio making paper as well as one of Quercus Psalter.

Sue Ann cont’d: I realized in California, in 1990, it was the year of the oak. So I thought oak trees, everybody knows what an oak tree is. So I did a one page flyer that was inserted into the paper and as soon as I finished that, I realized there was a lot of information. So then I was commissioned to do an installation for the National Forestry Association in Los Angeles. And by then I had a lot of information so I thought maybe I can get a whole book out of this. And that’s when I did this.

Question 3 Do you have a preferred method, if so what is it?

Answer Sybil: I think each book dictates the structure. Sometimes the story will present itself then you know you can do it in soft colors and fabric which will dictate how the book is made. It’s hard for me to say if I have a favorite method because each book I do requires it to be translated by the content. Of course I enjoy painting so I’m going to move toward the visuals.

Question 3 Answer Sue Ann: I really enjoy making one-of-a-kind books. I like to use paint, a lot of paste papers, collage. I’ve made books without any text to speak of but I’m also

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interested in the relationship of text to image. And I’m very inspired by illuminated manuscripts because they do such a good of job of intertwining the text with the imagery. I’m always trying to get the two entwined with each other.

Question 4 What do you feel is the value of book arts?

Answer Sybil: I feel that arts books gives people a place to put their inner spirit, their thoughts, it’s a very intimate form. It creates a world that is private yet the personal can become universal. I think that is very valuable to society for people to have a form to express themselves that’s accessible. You don’t have to go get a foundry to make brass, pour brass and make sculpture. You can do it quite easily at your kitchen table.

Question 4 (OS) Overlay more images from the book arts group that visited the library.

Answer Sue Ann: I think an artist’s book and book arts in general provide a place for viewers to stop and contemplate. Contemplation is looking with continued attention which I thought was an interesting definition. I think a lot of time we feel like we’re going very fast, at top speed all the time. The book arts require you to stop and spend time with the book even if you’re just turning the pages, that’s a little more time. The difference between a sequential art form, like the book, and movies and television, which are also sequential time-based art works, is that the producer controls the time. You as a viewer, very rarely would you pop into the middle of a film, you’re going to go from the beginning to the end and the producer or the film-maker is controlling that. But with a book it’s really up to you. You can start in

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the back if you want, you can start it, put it down. You’re controlling it. And you’re also having a much more active engagement with the contents.

Question 5 How would one get started in this medium?

Overlay images of her in the workshop with her machines.

Answer Charlene: I personally feel that if you seriously want to make some really incredible books, you need to know book repair. Every book is different and if you understand how book structure works, why you so a certain way, why the weight of something is this, how all the components work together, you’re going to make some amazing books. But you don’t have to know that. In fact most people don’t go that route. But if you didn’t want to take book-binding classes, you just wanted to jump straight into book arts, you’re going to go buy yourself a photo album and start filling it up. First you’ve got to make your insides and then once you get the photo album filled up, then you figure out how to make a book. You can get online. You can take classes, all that stuff’s going on.

Question 5 Answer Sybil: I think it’s good to look around your local community and see if there’s some kind of class. It can be something like print making or something in the arts. There are lots of little groups that are forming more and more. The San Diego book arts, I think there’s one in Long Beach and L.A. there are different book arts groups and they offer courses and the community colleges and art institutes. Now you can go online and find endless wonderful ‘how to’ make books and there’s lots of journaling and different formats online that are very satisfying.

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Question 5 Answer Sue Ann: I think in almost all the major US metropolitan areas there are centers for the book arts. There is one in New York, which I am going to visit next weekend. Minneapolis, Wisconsin is a very active book arts community. Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego. So I think if you’re close to a large urban center you can sign up for a workshop, go see an exhibit. The best way to get started is to go take a workshop. But there are so many varieties, so many entries into this. You can do paper-making. You can study calligraphy. You can learn how to bind books.

Question 6 How do you think this medium will evolve going forward?

Answer Sybil: Having done this now for eighteen years or longer, people asked at the beginning what is an artists’ book? Or what are you talking about? I think now there is much more of an awareness of artists’ books. One of the areas that I see artists’ books going is what’s called altered books which is taking discarded books and turning them into works of art. There are some extraordinary work coming out now of cut-outs. A few years ago Maya Lin, the architect, had all these atlas encyclopedias of earth that she had carved into and made beautiful topographical pieces. But there’s so much going on in that world of altered books that’s quite new. And I think even more and more attention is in that area of book arts.

Question 6 Answer Sue Ann: There are quite a few people who have speculated on the relationship of the book to new technology and the world wide web. My experience is that the sensual, tactile quality of the book is going to remain important. So I

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don’t think that the book is going to be eliminated. I think people will go to books for various reasons and to the Internet for various reasons. What’s interesting to me about libraries and museums is that you often go in with the idea that you are going to look for something but you come across so much else in going there. In the case of looking up something on the web, you may or may not find those same points of contact with other subjects. The other interesting thing about the web is, like early scrolls, it’s a scroll format, whereas with a book you can jump around in it fairly easily. It was one of the major inventions of humankind to move from scroll to codex form. It made retrieval of information so much easier. I think that the use of the book for retrieving information may lessen, but the use of a book for pleasurable reading, I don’t think that is going to go away.

Question 7 Where would you recommend people to go see artists’ books?

Overlay images of other books that the Library has on display.

Answer Sue Ann: The Cerritos Public Library. Really I think that that’s very true to see artists’ books. Because they’re not easy to see all the time. There are increasing numbers of exhibitions in museums and libraries but I like the idea that at the Cerritos Library you can come across artists’ books in various places in the library and people have the chance to make those discoveries. It’s a very nice thing. In Southern California the other major places, the Guild of Book Workers, which is a national organization, lists a lot of exhibitions. The Huntington has a wonderful collection of books by William Blake. Blake is actually in some ways the precursor to

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contemporary artists’ books because he did everything.

Final shot: World Traditions artists’ books

Audio Sue Ann: I think as long as story-telling and poetry exist, there will be artists’ books.

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