Barbara Brown’s WSG Book + Paper Arts finds her latest book art exhibit—with a few paper arts thrown—nestled, as usual, at the intriguing intersection of ubiquity and uniqueness.

On one hand, like Brown’s prior WSG book-oriented displays starting with 2006’s Beyond Words, this edition of Book + Paper Arts calls into question the nature and function of “the book” while deconstructing by illustration what books look like.

What Brown’s exhibit ultimately shows us is that any commonplace assumption is at best questionable—and often simply irrelevant. As she says in her gallery statement, the emphasis of this occasional theme has evolved: “In previous show statements, I have put forth the assertion that the term ‘artist’s book’ often triggers much discussion, even bickering and irresolution amongst book artists, and the point has sometimes been made that at the very instant one uses that term, one must then be ready to define the definition!”

A commonplace definition would be that a “book” is a number of sheets of blank or ruled paper bound together for communicating expression. But this description is obviously a bit too loose to clarify what a book can be because the communication of expression can be as much abstractly symbolic as it is literature—hence, art.

So perhaps a more precise definition would be that a “book” is a handwritten or printed work of narrative fiction or nonfiction usually arranged on sheets of paper, parchment, or some other material fastened or bound together by surface covers. Yet this definition is obviously too tight—hence also, art.

It’s really this paradoxical slackness and restrictiveness that Book + Paper Arts seeks to imaginatively address. As Brown adds in her statement, “There will probably never be a determination that everyone agrees on, but I like ‘book inspired art’ (or BSO—book shaped object), and for me, that is a good beginning.”

“Book” art requires uniqueness, for even the most ardent conceptual use of the term denotes an object whose stance apart from the norm is the result of declaring itself aesthetic—with or without proper surface.

This makes WSG organizer Barbara Brown (as much ringleader here as she is curator) an artful instigator falling on the side of creativity as opposed to the omnipresent presence of the “book” itself. Working from the base definition (as indeed only a few of the artworks on display at the WSG actually even resemble books), Brown’s want (as well as the impulse of the artists in this exhibit) is to take this commonplace idea and twist, fold, manipulate, and mangle it until the concept virtually says (and ultimately is) what the artist wants it to say—or be.

This is indeed a sweet surrender. Because what the artists do in Book +Paper Arts is ultimately quite creative—certainly endlessly fascinating—even if the concept of book gets left behind in some equations. And so much better for what hangs and sits in the WSG Gallery.

Regional artists participating in the exhibit are Ruth Bardenstein, Ian McLellan Davis, Meghan Forbes, Alvey Jones, Norma Penchansky-Glasser, Ted Ramsay, Susan Skarsgard, Jack O. Summers, and Howard White. As local gallery browsers well know, this is an exceedingly distinguished (as well as insightful) clutch of talent. Calling out four artworks will reflect various stands—and strands—of these artists' intent.

For example, University of Michigan Art Professor Emeritus Ted Ramsay initially seems the furthest afield from book art in the exhibit—working in paper art rather than book art. In particular, his cast handmade rag paper, wood, enamel Memorial to Thylacines and Our Slaughtered Michigan Wolves seems definitely farthest afield—that is, farthest afield until the implication of his work is taken into account.

Linking the fate of this extinct South Pacific carnivorous marsupial to Michigan’s wolf population, Ramsey is stretching the use of paper art to bookend these creatures’ fortunes. Using his career-long strategy of creating vivid oversized three-dimensional tableau coupled with a whimsical canine reference, Ramsey’s work requires a bit of familiarity to plume his intent. Afterwards, and given the decided bent of his humor, Ramsay comes to book with a readymade arsenal of creativity that’s part aesthetic and part polemic. His Memorial to Thylacines and Our Slaughtered Michigan Wolves fits the bill.

General Motors Design Archive and Special Collections manager Susan Skarsgard has long made the alphabet her chosen topic and her contribution to this show devoted to book and paper art is a return of her iconic Alphabet Pop Up, a handsome wall-mounted copper metallic paper sculpture that we last saw in WSG’s Beyond Words 2008 edition as well as 2009 in Washtenaw Community College’s At the Junction: Calligraphic Design exhibit. It’s good to see this masterwork again.

A tidy three inches wide by six foot in height, Alphabet Pop Up’s near-abstract rendering of the ABCs is both compact and nifty. Keying on the common Latin grapheme and rendering each letter in a handsome blockish type, while also paying attention to descending scale, Skarsgard’s Alphabet Pop Up is a welcome reminder that sculpture, too, can be conceptually dependable as well as commendable—you can, as it were, make book on it.

Detroiter Jack O. Summer’s Mapaloosa is an imaginative reordering of the world’s geography through a series of colorful plates. As he says of this book art, “This clam shell of mixed up countries was created to illustrate how our world is changing and how we are impacting each other and losing some of identity as our planet becomes more crowded and disturbed.”

Fair enough. But the irony of Summer’s aesthetic is that even as these juxtapositions of differing architectural, national, and geographic boundaries are visually jarring slivers and chunks of familiar locales willy-nilly thrust upon each other, his mash-up of geopolitical boundaries and geographic landscapes in Mapaloosa also have an artful logic that meshes the unusual arrangements together.

Finally, it would be unfair to conclude without a tip of the artistic hat to Brown and her video collaborator Howard White. Their 15”x15”x20” Midsummer theater book certainly fits the definition of book art if anything does. It’s a miniature rectangular bookish movie theater with short feature film squeezed together as one—and an intriguing nature-based documentary, at that.

What Midsummer best illustrates is Brown’s unyielding commitment to book art—however it’s defined—through her reworking this object in multiple medias to expand and enlarge the definition until the concept encompasses the entire range of neo-Dada assemblage.

And that’s ultimately a hefty handful of art.

John Carlos Cantú has written extensively on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.

Book + Paper Arts will run through July 30, 2016. The WSG Gallery is located at 306 S. Main Street: Tuesday-Wednesday, noon–6 p.m.; Thursday, noon-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, noon-10 p.m.; and Sunday, 1–5 p.m. For information, call 734-761-2287.