Verbs are accented with paint, nouns are shrouded with ribbon and poetry comes to life under the glow of hand-punched stars. Through books, readers gain access to poetic language and artistic ideas. But in a new exhibit at the Hill Memorial Library, the books themselves are works of art. Charles Hobson has spent the past 20 years developing an artistic approach where books become sculptures and the pages are canvas. Hill Memorial Library’s newest special collections exhibit features limited edition art books created by New Jersey-born artist Charles Hobson. “Why I Love Books: The Artworks of Charles Hobson” is a traveling exhibit organized by the Bolinas Museum in San Francisco. The exhibit was previously featured at the universities of Virginia, Utah and Washington. “The exhibit is a mini-retrospective, in a way, of all the books I’ve done since 1986. So it’s about 20 years worth of work,” Hobson said. Hobson collaborated with Elaine Smyth, Hill Memorial Library special collections curator, to organize the exhibit. “We have been buying his books for several years,” Smyth said. “[The books] are very interesting to look at, and they have beautiful text. It’s something a little bit different.” After a close friend died, Hobson worked with his friends to create his first art book as a memorial. “It opened my eyes to the force of the artist’s book as a creative medium much like painting would be for some people or sculpture would be for others,” he said. Hobson, who teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute, said he has a special relationship with each of his artist’s books. “All of my books are generated by relatively eccentric ideas that come in to my field of vision,” he said. Hobson said his book titled “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” was inspired by a poem he heard on National Public Radio by Billy Collins. He said the book is unique because the reader has to “undress” the book by flipping and unlacing the pages to read the poem. “That illustrates the real value of artist’s books as a creative medium because you can expand on what’s written and give the reader their own personal, unique experience,” he said. Hobson created several books based on the early navigation techniques that depended heavily on six constellations near the North Star. His book titled “Andromeda Imagined” comes with a flashlight and instructions to shine the light to project the constellations on the next page of the book. “I conceived that it would be an interesting book for children, so a publisher in San Francisco called Chronicle Books published a children’s version in the form of cards with star-shaped holes,” he said. Another artist’s book, featured in the exhibit “Dancing With Amelia,” was inspired by a letter Amelia Earhart wrote to her fiancé the day of their wedding. “The letter said she didn’t think getting married was a good idea, and she wanted to divorce if they didn’t find happiness after a year or so,” Hobson said. “This was a very curious letter to me, and it turned out that the man she married was very open-minded, and he obviously loved her so much he was willing to take that risk.” Hobson said Earhart and her husband remained married for six years until she died. Hobson will speak and present a slideshow Oct. 26 about the exhibit and his other books at Hill Memorial Library. He will also speak Oct. 28 at the Louisiana Book Festival.
—–Contact Angelle Barbazon at [email protected]