Bookish art at the Roundhouse
‘No Library Card Needed’ evokes libraries of yesteryear
Shhhh!
With its whimsical twists on the card catalog and deconstructions of books, an art exhibition off the Rotunda in the state Capitol evokes the sights and sounds of yesteryear’s library, before computers transformed the way we comb the stacks.
Organized by the Santa Fe Book Arts Group and curated by Cynthia Sanchez, director of the Capitol Art Foundation, “No Library Card Needed” is open to the public free of charge Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., as is the rest of the impressive art collection in the Roundhouse.
The show, which consists of 112 pieces by 79 artists, was a year in the making under the direction of Books Arts Group treasurer Liz Faust, said Barb Macks, the organization’s president.
The exhibition was the result of an invitation that Sanchez has traditionally extended to the Book Arts Group every other year, Macks said.
This year’s theme attracted a range of pieces that moved beyond the nonprofit’s traditional base of book binding, print making, altered books, collage, calligraphy and other media, Macks said.
A colorfully decorated card catalog cabinet created by Margaret Lubalin and Judythe Sieck provides a forum for a pro-choice statement, “Keep Your Hands Out of Our Drawers.”
It also houses portraits and minibiographies of such notable women as Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former first lady and author Michelle Obama and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, the female education activist from Pakistan.
Lubalin is best known in Santa Fe for creating a “Wall of Love” with her friends in the Railyard in 2018. That work was made up of 12-by-12-inch pieces of canvas with images of things that were close to the creator’s heart.
The card catalog is also the subject of Will Karp’s work “Before Computers.” However, in this piece the cards themselves take center stage as the contents of a drawer labeled “Animals” are splayed in an accordionlike fashion.
In his mission statement, Karp said he likes to define art as the science of “mark-making,” where “every camera click, mouse stroke, brush movement, impression, drip, cut, crease, cement, smear, scratch, squeeze or splatter is an intentional effort at making marks that deliver a message in two or three dimensions.
“No Library Card Needed” also provides the setting for a gathering of women in the form of Freya Diamond’s work, “Freya Asks: Can We Talk,” whose cutout figures include images of artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo. One can only imagine the conversation that would flow among these feisty femmes, whose heads are depicted in photographs and whose bodies are stylish, lifesized cardboard cutouts reminiscent of the childhood game of cutting out paper dolls.
“Ladye Zilpah McKinney 1888-1984,” by Mary Gray McGee, uses a typewriter case or a small piece of luggage to commemorate the life of its subject through memorabilia such as newspaper clippings, photographs, pressed flowers, a Bible, a piece of lace and even a miniature typewriter.
Books themselves take on new forms in the Roundhouse show, as evidenced by artfully crumpled and teased pages in S.C. Thayer’s “Altered Book #75” and Jim Baker’s “The Good Book,” in which pages of the Bible are hung from hooks attached to a wooden cross fashioned of distressed wood. Art is not Thayer’s first vocation; he spent over 12 years as executive pastor at the historic First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi, and recently served as executive pastor at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Santa Fe Book Arts Group has been in existence for more than 30 years but raised its profile recently by attaining full nonprofit status under Macks, who has announced plans to step down as head of the 175-member organization. Macks said having 501(c)(3) status gives the group more stability and flexibility, allowing it to partner with other entities such as Gerald Peters Projects and Make Santa Fe. Even given the limits on charitable deductions recently implemented in federal income taxes, nonprofit status also eases fundraising.
Macks, who is staying on as head of the Book Arts Group’s program committee, said she believes the organization is “in a very good spot.”