Arrested For Altered Art

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were artists, friends, and lovers, with a sense of artistic boredom that led them to the library.

"Libraries might as well not exist; they've got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books." Orton, 1967.

The pair were sentences to 6 months in prison for altering and defacing library books to entertaining ends. Somebody, probably originally for the sake of evidence, saved the altered covers. Orton and Halliwell got nationwide media attention due to the story of their arrest, entitled Gorilla in the Roses, after this altered cover.

via.

Cartooning In Class

Over at Kitschy-Kitschy-Coo, wifey D has posted some fun doodles from the beginning of an old textbook.

Police Children's Book, Rewritten by Chavs

On the right-hand side, a fine British children's book. Oh, the left-hand side was once the same thing, but this edition appears to have been rewritten by somebody with a bad attitude about the police (some NSFW, others just funny):

Wall-Mounted Book-Light

It's not exactly the "clip to the dustjacket' booklight, but I'm sure it can still be used for reading. As I always do, I wince at the idea of dismembering a book, but I soften when I see how ingenious and pretty the results can be. The creator was being very responsible by recommending only a small-wattage bulb (paper plus high heat equal bad news), but the current crop of fluorescent bulbs would probably do quite well. I suspect you don't want to go too bright or it may lose some of the ambiance; this book-lamp is akin to a wall sconce -- designed to throw light in a beautiful way rather an a functional form. Imagine a library with these on all 4 sides of the columns holding up the vaulted ceiling, or one of those 11x14 Atlases of the World. Very nice.

Decomposition Of Books

Detroit Public Schools once had a book depository. It's still there, but hasn't been maintained in years, and its once-educational contents have been ravaged by fire and weather, resulting in this blog post and this set of Flickr photos. It is haunting, and sad, but reminiscent of the "World Without Us" book or the Life After People show. On a small scale, without human intervention nature has started reclaiming this building from the inside out. (see also) Books, it seems, are both good for growing both smarts and nature. (via)

Corky Normart's Book

Julie's mom bought this book at a Fresno Flea-market, and now she's got it -- it once belonged to Corky Normart, a young lad whose family once owned a fur company. How's Julie know all this? because of Corky's artwork inside the cover, of course (click on the cover in her post to see).

Books As Display

We were Christmas shopping this week, and stopped in at Zandbroz, a funky out-of-the-ordinary shoppe here in Fargo (and in Sioux Falls). I believe Zandbroz is the last independent bookstore in Fargo, so between the good books, cool toys, and handmade jewelry, we know we can find good stuff there.
In a jewelry display case, we observed the display on the right -- showing off necklaces are books! It looks like it took quite a bit of work to do all the books; I believe there were five or six. Each page was folded back on itself, so the outer edge touched the inner spine. Then, when the book was laid flat, the pages fan out as seen there, with some nice detail of the text on the page showing on the folded edge. All of the books were old, leatherbound books, which makes me cringe a little to see such fine books bent and creased like this, but visually it's a great use of found objects and art in one.