Open Shelves Exhibit Call to Artists

Deadline for Email Submissions: Monday, April 18, 2016 at 11:59 p.m.

 

Exhibition Location: Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library in Washington, DC. The exhibit may also travel to locations near the library or to other DC Public Library locations after July 2016.

 

Exhibition Duration: Selected handmade artists' books, called Open Handmade Books, will remain on display from July 1 to July 31, 2016.

 

The Open Shelves exhibition will begin with six handmade books created by six book artists. These handmade books will be augmented and altered by community participants and library customers during the exhibition period. The Open Shelves exhibition provides library customers and community members the opportunity to become co-authors, artists, and collaborators of handmade books. No one curator, artist, or author decides what is most relevant or most important in the content of the books in the exhibit because the content is created and changed by the participants during the exhibition.

 

The focus of the exhibition is on community curation, collaborative art, handmade books, and the concept of 'Open works.' Coined by the late philosopher and writer Umberto Eco, 'Open works' are pieces that are finished by the user. Artist Keri Smith has popularized the 'Open works' concept with her interactive art books for adults, teens, and children. Moreover, the 'Exquisite corpse' concept loosely influences the exhibition because participants will collaborate and add content to the handmade books with subsequent participants adding content influenced by the work of previous participants.