{"id":27014,"date":"2014-11-05T23:58:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T05:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=27014"},"modified":"2025-11-09T22:39:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T05:39:23","slug":"altared-books-at-finch-lane-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/altared-books-at-finch-lane-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Altared Books at Finch Lane Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From the clay tablets of the Minoans to the papyrus scrolls of the Egyptians, from the illuminated manuscripts of medieval monasteries to Gutenberg\u2019s Bible and the pulp novels of the 20th century, the book has had a monumental role in the creation of civilization. It is history itself. Because of this historical and cultural context, the book offers a wealth of possibilities to the artist. As an alternative formal medium it allows for an abundance of inherent associations and semiotic play. This is in evidence at\u00a0Altared Books: Offerings in (Con)text<\/em>, now at Finch Lane Gallery, where seven artists deconstruct the book in various ways and methods to various ends, using fragments, not of history, but the avatar of this history, the book itself. Yet, despite the transformations these objects undergo, ultimately they retain part of their original purpose, the power of narrative.<\/p>\n

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Carol Berry<\/p><\/div>\n

Exhibition curator Kandace Steadman says the show and its title refer to \u201cbooks that are not just changed but given as an offering, a sacrifice, not necessarily religious, but like an altar, a place of devotion.\u201d\u00a0 That devotion is a recontextualizing of contexts, to ascribe new meaning from the wealth of meaning available to the artist from the source material that is a book, and creating an entirely new narrative through altered contexts.<\/p>\n

Carol Berrey\u2019s \u201cAltered Altar\u201d is an excellent introduction to the show. It is a literal triptych altarpiece complete with the triptych panel paintings, candles, table, scriptures, and even a holy icon. All elements have been produced by the use of appropriated pages of scripture from various Christian texts in various languages. These texts cover the entire work, including the candlesticks. Berrey makes literal the thesis of the show by placing in recontextualized form a book as an altar, and in doing so, acknowledges the seminal history of the book, representative of the core of universalized religion, in the history of Western civilization.\u00a0 Here, the reality of the essential thread of history being maintained \u201cat the altar,\u201d in its darkest moments, its most uncivilized hour, is alluded to, and the parallel of the civilization of humanity, and the prominence of the book, is made manifest.\u00a0 Berrey sees her work as a unification of many types of Western religions and looks to the future in her work as she states, \u201cBy combining these sacred materials from many religions, I express my hope for a future free from religious strife.\u201d Like the book, the art\u2019s narrative invites liberal interpretation.<\/p>\n

A more particular allusion to the book and its specificity as a medium in religious propagation is made the subject of a work of art by Chauncey Secrist with his altered book \u201cThe Sacred and Profane.\u201d\u00a0 Always begging the questions but forever leaving an open door, the work is an inquisition into universalized religion and its relevancy today. The book that has been altered retains its original context while the allowance for play that it might at the same time be altared, and its original context be bent and made malleable.\u00a0 The book is an older, hardback version of\u00a0Jesus the Christ<\/em>, written by Mormon apostle James Talmage and held in high esteem by the LDS faith.\u00a0 Within the book has been cut a tabernacle for a small bronze Buddha, a symbol that much of the Eastern Hemisphere holds as sacred.\u00a0 On top of this devotional offering is a long beaked bird\u2019s skull placed along the top edge of the book.\u00a0 \u201cJust how relevant, how alive in today\u2019s culture, in contemporary reality, is this thinking from the distant past?\u201d Secrist seems to be asking.<\/p>\n

This kind of narrative recontextualization is heightened in three pieces by Frank McEntire.\u00a0 With \u201cGazette\u201d and \u201cScripture Writer Reconfigured,\u201d the most elaborate alterations in the show with the most found-object appropriation and the least book, McEntire is begging no questions and leaves no doors open with his satire on the dominance of religion. In \u201cIllustrated Scripture History,\u201d he addresses the subject with some brevity\u2026 even subtlety. Although more reductive in form than the typing machine and prayer role of \u201cScripture Writer Reconfigured\u201d or the antique newspaper vending machine in \u201cGazette,\u201d \u201cIllustrated Scripture History\u201d might even be said to have a formal elegance but in all actuality it is violent and angry.\u00a0 A train rail spike has been driven through a small antique volume, the title of the piece, that sits squared on top of two consecutively larger antique volumes. The narrative is a straightforward and direct statement on religion, spelled out through so many elements, the book being one essential symbol to convey this message, be it through a series of symbols in \u201cGazette,\u201d with a silver crucifix in the facing panel, a miniature Salt Lake Temple with phallic-like rockets all set on an LDS sacrament tray set on a large volume of scripture, or the simplified \u201c\u201cIllustrated Scripture History.\u201d\u00a0 Either way, each tells a story.
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The work of Jody Plant addresses her audience on an entirely different level, or levels.\u00a0 Her altered creations impact the viewer in a way that is the antithesis of McEntire\u2019s nail on the hammer method, but merely a suggestion, a devotion of elements that are as if they had never been anything than what they are, that their altered state is their true state, that this is their genuine state of being, and in this genuine state of being their purpose, like each of the works we have seen thus far, through a vocabulary of symbols, speaks a narrative, not one in particular, but custom made for each individual viewer\u2019s sensible responsive state of being.\u00a0 It is a harmonic synthesis. \u201cHeretic\u201d makes an inward protestation and is not loud but allows its viewer to ponder it and opens itself to be considered.\u00a0 Like a Rothko in sculpted multimedia form, it is an object of contemplation, of \u201cnatural or forgotten worlds,\u201d says Plant.\u00a0 Plant makes a feathery display of the book at top with folded paper, and sets that on an old piece of driftwood like a boat, which rests on a bird\u2019s \u00a0nest. This Plant sets on two books shelled in encaustic and placed on a grating.\u00a0 It is a series of symbols whose vocabulary can be read in any manner the viewer likes, adhering to the theme of nature, and stories and mystery.\u00a0 It is not a puzzle but possibility for inspiration and sensible stimulation and wonderment.\u00a0 \u201cThey Became Birds\u201d is likewise a devotion of possibility for thought and feeling.\u00a0 The book, again, has been feathered, and in it Plant has placed a feather, as if it were always meant to be there.\u00a0 Set on a rusted hanging frame, there is a nest and a small frame with an antique photograph. Here the notion of time sets in to propel the concourse of inspiration and direct the narrative and it is one that moves us \u201cnot only in three, but in four dimensions,\u201d says Plant. This is seen lucidly in her \u201cLa Perouse Bay,\u201d where the open book is in a state of destruction and within it is placed a decayed hull of a fish.\u00a0 All has been ravaged by time and what is left are fragments of a reality the viewer must piece together, come to grips with, or make some sense out of with total liberty and no occupying force to determine responsiveness.<\/p>\n

Artist Lon\u00e9 Vilnius\u2019 \u201cBook Wise\u201d is a pun loosely structured on a re-created owl formed out of a restructured book, drawing on not only the formal allowances of the book she creates in a semi-owl-like structure, but also the relationship between the knowledge contained in a book and the allusion to the wise owl. In this and works like \u201cThe Proper Sinner\u201d and \u201cThe Written Word\u201d Vilnius creates an art for arts\u2019 sake discourse with her altered books creations. She deconstructs the formal aspects of the book and recontextualizes them in new, structurally surprising, humorous, whimsical or challenging ways, in a context similar to Modernist formalist experimentation, pushing the limitations of just what artistic ends can be reached with the book with work that deconstructs and recontextualizes the book purely for its own sake.<\/p>\n

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Nancy Steele-Makasci uses the book to relate specific historically relevant narrative episodes.\u00a0 In \u201c6,000,000\u201d the artist uses a signature paper fluting layered with collaged paper to recall the historical occurrence of the Holocaust, made poignant by the handmade and painted barbed wire that surrounds the paper fluting.\u00a0 In \u201cShrine: Worship! DO NOT READ!\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the viewer is reminded of Catholic Church history and the strictly enforced illiteracy upon the general population of Europe whose only means to knowledge was through Church-commissioned art.\u00a0 And in \u201cEphemeral Flute,\u201d the artist\u2019s altared book tubing is wound with cord to re-create the temporal passage of time and the reality of the ceaseless narrative that is the essence and reality of time.<\/p>\n

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Emily Dyer is the only artist in the show who, rather than altering or recontextualizing a book, has rendered her own new bookish creation. \u201cExtravagant or Credo\u201d is a fold-out accordion-like paper-made book, \u00a0using words, passages of scripture and poetry, with pockets and pull-out cards, to create an endless play of semantic structures and relationships of meanings of significance \u2014 an endless abstract but very poignant narrative.\u00a0 \u201cThe book is my explanation of the extravagance of faith\u2014of worship,\u201d says Dyer.\u00a0 \u201cExtravagant or Credo\u201d is an ingenuous formation on the book that, as we have seen, can come in any form or structure, but Dyer stresses the fundamental principle of the book, which is not the turning of the page, but the transporting of information, which, for Dyer\u2019s purposes, is indefatigable.<\/p>\n

As all artists have made clear, the book is an ephemeron, one that we as the human race have made real and given context.\u00a0 This thoughtful exhibition, in its many altared states, seeks to deconstruct the object of the book, showing that it is not the book that is the substance of religion, civilization, and the passage of time, but we, the civilization that empowers pulp and ink with narrative power. What we find is that the essential quality of the book, its ability to record, to tell a story is still preserved in each of these various artworks.<\/p>\n

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Altared Books: Offerings in (Con) text<\/em>, featuring the work of Carol Berrey, Emily Dyer, Frank McEntire, Jody Plant, Chauncey Secrist, Nancy Steele-Makasci, and Lon\u00e9 Vilnius, is on exhibit at Salt Lake City\u2019s\u00a0Finch Lane Galleythrough November 21.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the clay tablets of the Minoans to the papyrus scrolls of the Egyptians, from the illuminated manuscripts of medieval monasteries to Gutenberg\u2019s Bible and the pulp novels of the 20th century, the book has had a monumental role in the creation of civilization. It is history itself. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":27015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[791,96,99,2127,1562,786,952],"class_list":["post-27014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-chauncey-secrist","tag-finch-lane-gallery","tag-frank-mcentire","tag-jody-plant","tag-kandace-steadman","tag-lone-vilnius","tag-nancy-steele-makasci"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/altaredbooksblog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 07:17:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27014"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98241,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27014\/revisions\/98241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}