Book Art

I'm always interested in finding new ways to use books as art -- whether it's creating a spectrum from shelved books or recycling books as craft projects. Here's another: Litographs , colorful wall prints that incorporate the words of Moby Dick and other classics into designs. Founder Danny Fein notes that with each purchase a book is donated to a community in need through the Baltimore-based International Book Bank. For contemporary books, each print is custom-made from a physical copy of the book that is scanned and printed back out in "art form," he said.

If you're in the mood for some science fiction silliness, "The Intergalactic Nemesis: A Live-Action Graphic Novel" promises to keep you laughing on Friday, June 20, at 8 p.m. in the Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake. This Columbia Festival of the Arts presentation combines aspects of 1930s-style radio dramas with comic book art. Like such movies as "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," this theatrical show looks to the campy science fantasy and adventure stories of that earlier era for its inspiration.

MATANZAS, Cuba -- Black tissue paper rustles as you pick up the slim book of poetry entitled "Unforeseen Nectar." On the cover, tied to flesh-colored lace, is a foldout fan of shaved wood and paper, a delicate canvas for a hand-painted garden and its story:The bee returned to my rose bush,I told him,It's late for nectar,This is still winter for me...-- Dulce Maria LoynazThere are only 200 copies of "Unforeseen Nectar," each edition carrying a hand-drawn image of a kerosene lantern -- the symbol of Ediciones Vigia, a small book collective where designers, illustrators, poets and writers create works in a genre known as artists' books.

If the usual summertime cultural fare - pops concerts, lightweight novels for beach reading, escapist movies - has you hankering for something more substantive and stimulating, head over to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The new exhibit in the Front Room gallery at the entrance to the Contemporary Wing is anything but passive entertainment. The videos, photos, sculptures and mixed-media pieces by Baltimore's Jimmy Joe Roche and British-born Nathaniel Mellors are all about provoking, perplexing, parodying and poking fun. Curator Kristen Hileman, who encountered Roche's works in Baltimore and New York and Mellors' at the Venice Biennale, saw the potential in pairing the rebellious artists.

If you're in the mood for some science fiction silliness, "The Intergalactic Nemesis: A Live-Action Graphic Novel" promises to keep you laughing on Friday, June 20, at 8 p.m. in the Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake. This Columbia Festival of the Arts presentation combines aspects of 1930s-style radio dramas with comic book art. Like such movies as "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," this theatrical show looks to the campy science fantasy and adventure stories of that earlier era for its inspiration.

If the usual summertime cultural fare - pops concerts, lightweight novels for beach reading, escapist movies - has you hankering for something more substantive and stimulating, head over to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The new exhibit in the Front Room gallery at the entrance to the Contemporary Wing is anything but passive entertainment. The videos, photos, sculptures and mixed-media pieces by Baltimore's Jimmy Joe Roche and British-born Nathaniel Mellors are all about provoking, perplexing, parodying and poking fun. Curator Kristen Hileman, who encountered Roche's works in Baltimore and New York and Mellors' at the Venice Biennale, saw the potential in pairing the rebellious artists.

That huge sigh of relief you may have heard recently came from the art world.Following a depressed period, the sales and values of high-quality artwork have suddenly picked up in 1995.It's not really a boom because it doesn't yet cover all segments of the art market. However, prospects are promising for the first time since a price collapse four years ago prompted by the flight of Japanese speculators.More than $270 million in impressionist, modern and contemporary art were sold at recent Sotheby's and Christie's auctions in New York City.

The Glenwood Senior Center, 2400 Route 97, Cooksville, will sponsor a Halloween and Harvest Bingo at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 14. Take a Halloween or fall treat to be used as a bingo prize. Free admission. Registration is requested by Friday. The Glenwood Community Book Club will meet at the senior center at 10 a.m. Wednesday and Nov. 5. The group will discuss Peace Like a River by Leif Enger on Wednesday. The center will offer a Painting and Drawing Open Studio from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesdays.

Hundreds of people dressed in wizard's robes, tight black denim and sci-fi garb strolled through the halls of the Omni Inner Harbor Hotel yesterday, discussing animation, astronomy, art and film -- and the 39 stargazers who took their lives in California last week.Many of those attending the 31st annual Balticon science fiction convention, who were delighted to discuss literature, were quick to say that beliefs of members of the Heaven's Gate cult were not based on science, but on an ancient religion.

"This time we got it right," said Robert Heide, who, with his partner John Gilman, has updated and corrected their out-of-print art deco collector's bible, "Dime Store Dream Parade," which they wrote in 1979, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Great Depression."Popular Art Deco, Depression-Era Style and Design" (Abbeville, is the expanded version of their illustrated survey of popular culture 1925 to 1955, which they have researched for the last quarter century with the fervor of archaeologists.

I'm always interested in finding new ways to use books as art -- whether it's creating a spectrum from shelved books or recycling books as craft projects. Here's another: Litographs , colorful wall prints that incorporate the words of Moby Dick and other classics into designs. Founder Danny Fein notes that with each purchase a book is donated to a community in need through the Baltimore-based International Book Bank. For contemporary books, each print is custom-made from a physical copy of the book that is scanned and printed back out in "art form," he said.

Climb the stairs to Gregory Paul's third-floor Charles Village apartment and you may quickly find yourself slipping back 100 million years or more into the Mesozoic era. The Baltimore artist's walls are filled with lush portraits of dinosaurian wildlife in action, many in color. Tyrannosaurs step off across mud flats on a sunset hunt. A pair of feathered Archaeopteryx cavort like gulls at the surf line of an ancient beach. The dynamic scenes are part of his work for the new Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs — but Paul, 56, a self-taught paleontologist, full-time illustrator, author and dino-consultant to TV, museums and the movies, is no newcomer.

The Glenwood Senior Center, 2400 Route 97, Cooksville, will sponsor a Halloween and Harvest Bingo at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 14. Take a Halloween or fall treat to be used as a bingo prize. Free admission. Registration is requested by Friday. The Glenwood Community Book Club will meet at the senior center at 10 a.m. Wednesday and Nov. 5. The group will discuss Peace Like a River by Leif Enger on Wednesday. The center will offer a Painting and Drawing Open Studio from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesdays.

Shirley Balser, a rare-books and art dealer, died Monday of a pulmonary embolism at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 80. Miss Balser was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. "She was a 1946 graduate of Forest Park High School, where she was art editor of the yearbook and wrote for the school newspaper," said her sister, Trudy Kaufman of Pikesville. After earning a bachelor's degree in literature and art from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1950, she worked as a copywriter in the advertising department of the old Julius Gutman department store in downtown Baltimore.

Cecil Archer Rush, a retired government scientist who spent much of his life collecting scholarly books and art from Tibet and India, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Friday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Northwood resident was 90. Born in Dillwyn, Va., he was the son of a letter carrier who recognized his child's love of learning. The young Mr. Rush was home schooled initially and supplemented his education by having books mailed from the Richmond public library. He earned a degree in physics and chemistry from the College of William and Mary and studied for a doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin until 1940.

If you go The American Craft Show will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Tickets are $14-$20. Call 800-836-3470 or visit craftcouncil.org.

Researchers or casual readers visiting the Edgar Allan Poe or H.L. Mencken collections at the Enoch Pratt Free Library will eventually come across the name of Joseph Katz, a Baltimore advertising executive and bibliophile whose collection of 3,500 books and manuscripts was presented to the library after his death in 1958. It was the sharp eye of James H. Bready, a friend and former newspaper colleague, who noticed in last week's New Yorker an essay on the poet Jane Mayhall, and picked up the phone.

If the stacks of the Library of Congress were arranged end to end, they would extend from Washington to Cape Cod or Toledo, Ohio. There are 522 miles of them. Some are three stories tall. But an ordinary visitor to the library sees only a few books. There's the Gutenberg Bible and the Giant Bible of Mainz and the roomful of books that Thomas Jefferson sold to Congress to re-establish the library after the British burned the Capitol in 1814. They're all prominently displayed in glass cases and certainly are worth seeing.

Researchers or casual readers visiting the Edgar Allan Poe or H.L. Mencken collections at the Enoch Pratt Free Library will eventually come across the name of Joseph Katz, a Baltimore advertising executive and bibliophile whose collection of 3,500 books and manuscripts was presented to the library after his death in 1958. It was the sharp eye of James H. Bready, a friend and former newspaper colleague, who noticed in last week's New Yorker an essay on the poet Jane Mayhall, and picked up the phone.

In a pluralistic art world, fine art is where you find it, be it at a gallery exhibition, on an interactive Web site or in a handmade artist's book. Brian Pinkney's imaginative illustrations for children's books are also fine art, as a charming exhibition at the Walters Art Museum that opens Saturday amply attests. Pinkney's whimsical portrayals of historical figures such as Duke Ellington, fairy-tale personages such as Cinderella and impressions of African-American characters in original works of fiction have won him wide acclaim for their vibrant sense of color and movement.