Ok, I walk into the lobby–it’s spacious and shiny, flooded with sunshine from skylights in the ceiling and enormous two story glass walls–past display cases and cubbyholes chocked full of community info and free brochures about everything going on in Raleigh; a lounge area to my left has chairs and tables where people lounge with their laptops, using the free WiFi that’s strong throughout the entire building. I ask a woman behind a counter where is the . . . and immediately she tells me, before I even finish my question. Following her directions, I walk up the gleaming sunlit staircase that looks like marble and turns and winds like something out of Gone With The Wind. I reach the second floor, walk past an area filled with about thirty desktop computers, every one of them occupied, all ages and types of people surfing the net, doing research and/or writing the Great American Novel. I spot private nooks and crannies off the wide aisles lined with bookcases, where people sit in comfy chairs. They are actually . . . reading . . . books.
Another counter lady points me toward a wall of doors that lead to several meeting/conference rooms (which any Wake County group can use for free–just sign up in advance like the those industrious computer occupants have done). Through one door I see a woman gesturing, talking, instructing. She stands before a table laden with beautiful sculpted, collage and painted works of art that look like they used to be . . . . books. This must be the place!
If you don’t know where I am by now, then you need to be reminded of that tall, two story building in Cameron Village. Now, you don’t need to be told about Cameron Village; you know that fun, 50′s sort of walkable shopping center– a shopping center! Right there practically in the middle of the city! Thriving, in spite of surrounding malls and suburban shopping center sprawl! Don’t stop and shop yet. Keep going, past Fresh Market, to the end of Clark Street. That tall, two-story building? The library? You remember.
Oh, stop rolling your eyes and saying Geesh, a library? First a movie theater and now a library? Because this library–Cameron Village Library–did something extraordinary last week, quietly and without fanfare or splash (because it is the kind of thing they do all the time) this library introduced to about 20 people (for free!) an art form that is the latest hottest thing, an underground art movement, in other cities, spreading faster than kudzu roots; a new kind of art that several well known artists have taken up, whose amazing creations are now on display at MOMA in NYC and the like.
I walk into the room. Immediately I’m aware of a bustling busy-ness at the several long tables, and realize the workshop already started, so I apologize to the instructor for being late and turn toward one of the tables to take a seat. I stop, horrified. People are tearing up library books. They are furiously ripping the pages right out of books! As fast as they can, they rip pages and toss them on the floor. Am I in the wrong room after all? Did I misunderstand the tiny notice I spotted while scanning the A & E section as I do every week, searching for the unusual happening, the barely known but awesome band or writer or artist coming to Raleigh? That miniscule listing, entitled “Transform Old Books into New Art” had snagged my attention. Last winter, in Tucson, I saw artists of all sorts–sculptors, painters, print makers, multimedia artists–all of them applying their particular skill to make what is called “Altered Books.”
This is the right place, the teacher says, laughing. She is Tracy Johnson, the manager of Panopolie, a beading store in Raleigh. She says she instructed the class to rip out pages–to remove around 40 % of the book. This is how you start an “Altered Book.” Take an old book that has committed no crime other than to become very outdated and very unread, and is now sentenced to the landfill with about a hundred of its buddies (and that’s just in this room alone for this class; tons of them go into the landfill all the time) and you rip out a bunch of its pages, to make room for what you do to the remaining pages: you will paint, collage, pierce, fold, cut, twist, tie, punch, lace, sculpt, bind, glue, stitch, any thing at all, whatever your vision and artistic eye leads you to do. And this former book is not only rescued from certain death; it becomes art, your art.
For two hours last Thursday, at no cost, I made an altered book, thanks to Cameron Village Library and Panopolie (in addition to beading supplies, the store sells material for book arts, and is starting to offer classes in altered books and handmade journals, taught by Dawn who brings this new art form to Raleigh all the way from her former city–New Orleans).
Coming up (for free!) at Cameron Village Library:
MYSTERY AUTHOR PANEL DISCUSSION June 5 at 6 PM, famous writers right here!
LOCAL AUTHOR PANEL DISCUSSION June 10 at 2 PM More famous writers (of the local literary sort)
PRESS 53 PUBLISHING Sunday June 3 at 2:30 PM: a successful small press in Raleigh and the authors they publish will talk about writing, getting into print, etc.
So, turn off your 500 Cable/Satellite TV/Radio set, get off your $100 month phone/broadband digital gadgets and visit this sunlit spot with free books, free wifi, free computer use, free meeting space, free audiobooks, free workshops, free information on anything you want to know and I mean anything (and from far better sources than Google or Wikipedia). That counter lady who knew what I wanted before I said it? She is called a librarian. Every librarian I have ever known loves to give information. That is what they are there for. Imagine. A real person that is helpful, accurate, and kind; a human being with a talent for sensing what you want before you say it, the way a good auto mechanic just knows what your car needs by looking at it. This is healing stuff for people who are tired of automated menus and computerized programs that pretend to do what libraries really do. Get thee to the library. Take a book cure.
