From a poetic carton of eggs to a story encased in soap, the SMFA at Tufts library collects artists’ visions of what a book can be
The most talked-about artist’s book in the SMFA at Tufts’ library may be the cheese book. Officially titled 20 Slices, the 2018 artwork consists of individually wrapped American cheese singles bound together in a hardcover tome.
Students have mixed reactions to it. Darin Murphy, assistant director of the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library at SMFA, remembers one class getting into a heated discussion, with some students calling it a waste of money, especially since the once-orange slices have turned moldy green over time. Others defended it, seeing a metaphor for the decay of American values. Plus, it’s hard not to crack a smile at a book made of cheese.
At about 2,000 items, the SMFA library’s artists’ books collection isn’t the largest or most costly among universities, but it is known for its eclecticism—a book of Urdu poetry with hand-painted flowers and gold leaf details can share the shelf with an homage to Cajun sausages. Famous artists from around the world and recent graduates are represented.
“The book doesn’t have to be perfect,” Murphy said. “It can be rough, it can be funny, it can be a joke.”
At about 2,000 items, the SMFA library’s artists’ books collection is known for its eclecticism.
What is an artist’s book? The definition is blurry, Murphy acknowledged, but he sees it as an artwork that has a bookishness about it. It could look like a conventional book, with a binding or pages (even ones made of cheese), or it could look like a pack of chewing gum or a message in a bottle but have a story at its center—the soul of a book.
And as with a more conventional book, artists’ books all have to be opened to be experienced. Unlike a painting on the wall, these artworks don’t work unless they are “activated,” said Murphy, whose goal is to get the books into as many student hands as possible. Anyone can view the books with an appointment.
Kevin Oye, executive director of Tufts’ Gordon Institute, brings his master’s in innovation and management students to see the artists’ books every year. Why business students? “For our students to experience the unexpected,” he said, “seeing how artists leverage their creativity to communicate ideas, thoughts, and emotions in novel ways.” In other words, they think outside the book.
The novelty of Angela Lorenz’s Soap Story is a standout for Oye. The six bars of soap that make up the “book” reveal story snippets as they are used, turning handwashing into an interactive artwork. “Students are delighted as they uncover the tale bit by bit, just as their own stories are revealing themselves as they live each day,” he said.
The six cubes of soap that make up “Soap Story” reveal story snippets printed on fabric as they are used.
“For many of our students, and myself included, art is often treated as precious,” Oye said, “so it’s unusual and revealing to be encouraged by Darin to handle the art books with our own hands and experience them as not just things to view but tactile pieces to feel, to smell, and to ponder as a group.”
That means that while always handled with care, the books don’t get the white-glove treatment that some other special collections demand. And Murphy is fine with the risks that entails. Rather than rare books, he said he considers them more like “medium rare.”
When SMFA lecturer Milcah Bassel recently brought her papermaking class to the library, the students passed around a selection of artists’ books, feeling the texture of the pages, even noting the sounds they made.
SMFA at Tufts students “activate” a selection of artists’ books, including the hollow eggs that make up the book “Beginning,” at the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library.
“What if an artwork was handled 30,000 times and then got a little tear, but it got to be viewed and appreciated and influenced other artwork through those handlings—was it worth it?” Bassel asked.
The cheese book now sits in a plexiglass case in a corner of the library and doesn’t come out regularly. But there are plenty of other titles available for close perusal as the collection continues to grow. Every year, Murphy attends book fairs for fresh offerings, inviting students to rate his selections before he decides what to purchase.
Sometimes he finds himself in competition with other collectors for a limited edition, but he has an advantage. “A lot of artists want to be in our collection,” Murphy said, “because they know we’re going to have students activate the books.”
Here is a sampling of gems from the collection.
Uyghur Food
Colette Fu, Philadelphia, PA, 2019
During her travels in China, Fu, a photographer, was taken with the culture of the Uyghur people, a Turkic ethnic group. “She didn’t necessarily think that a single photograph on a frame told the story the way she was experiencing the people, the food, the culture, the land,” Murphy said. “And so she came up with a different way to do it.” That way was a pop-up book, which opens into a cascade of naan, hand-pulled laghman noodles, local grapes, a classic kebob grill cart, a traditionally woven tablecloth, and other images unique to the Uyghur.
Beginning
Jessica R. Elsaesser and Alaska L. McFadden, Brooklyn, NY, 2010
Which came first, the artwork or the book? Elsaesser and McFadden took a carton of eggs, blew out their insides through tiny holes, and inserted small poems along with a lover’s knot, seeds, glass beads, brass bells, and a firework, among other things. One can guess at the contents from a gentle shake, a printed clue on the egg top (“peals” for the bells?), or by simply cracking them open. Only one in the Tufts dozen has been cracked so far—accidentally, by Murphy, who sees it as a worthwhile casualty.
Atlas of Punctuation
Heidi Neilson, Rosendale, NY, 2004
“Imagine that you’re looking all the way through a book, front to back, with magic eyes, and you’re just seeing the end-of-sentence punctuation,” said Murphy. It would look something like a page from Heidi Neilson’s Atlas of Punctation. She collects the periods, exclamation points, and question marks that make up the verbal boundaries of a classic novel and collapses them into a single plane, so they can be seen at a glance. Appropriately, the 14 books that Neilson maps in this way—including The Phantom Tollbooth, The Little Prince, and A Wrinkle in Time—all play with the concepts of space and scale in their own way.
Sir Thomas’more, or, Utopia Impaled: A Memento Mori: More’s’mores as Metaphor for More’s Mores and More’s Mors, in Morus
Angela Lorenz, Bologna, Italy, 2007
The library owns several artists’ books by Angela Lorenz, who combines serious topics with puny humor. Here, quotes from Sir Thomas More, the lord high chancellor of England under Henry VIII, become More’s s’mores, nestled in an accordion book sandwiched between two faux graham crackers. The book also includes deeply visceral insults between More and Martin Luther, the German theologian who was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation. “They loved to say really mean things about each other,” Murphy said, “so much so I’m often too embarrassed to read those out loud in class.” Among the tamer taunts: “louse-infested friar” and “pestilent buffoon.” A marshmallow “toasted” with More’s likeness sits nearby.
Cajun Style Green Onion Pork Sausage: Recipe and Instruction Guide
Ethan LeBlanc, A25 (BFA), Boston, 2024
Ethan LeBlanc, a native of Louisiana, crafted this book as a celebration of his heritage. The handsewn book of handmade paper contains instructions for cooking Cajun-style sausage from scratch. It sits in a Styrofoam meat tray and includes extra plastic film and labels so the book can be resealed again and again. While unwrapping the book and reading its receipt-like colophon of publication details is fun, “Ethan would argue that the way to really activate the book is to make the sausages,” Murphy said.
Memory of Long Ago
Radha Pandey, Tistedal, Norway, 2018
In creating Memory of Long Ago, Radha Pandey knew she wanted to work with the idea of firn—the granular snow on the top of a glacier that has not yet been compressed. Using beaten abacá fibers from a banana plant, she made translucent sheets of waxed, white paper and layered them to look like thin sheets of ice. The reader has to get quite close to see the words of the book, a poem printed in white and revealed only when each page is held just so. The process evokes an arctic scientist carefully studying the layers of a glacier to read the history of the planet.
Venus
Kristina Hagman, A19 (BFA), Boston, 2017
Hagman made this piece while a student, and although it contains no words, Murphy could see how it was a book. The title calls to mind Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus,” which depicts the goddess rising from the sea on a scallop shell. The flaps of leather that hold the halves of the quahog shell together mimic both the clam body and female genitalia. “This very labial presentation was part of Kristina’s invitation for us to think of the opening and closing of the book as a very intimate and personal activation,” Murphy said.
I Want to Take Picture
Bill Burke, SMFA faculty 1972–2024, Atlanta, GA, 1987
In the 1980s, Bill Burke traveled to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam to try to come to terms with the war that haunted his generation. The result was this extended photo essay. Burke gives the book a scrapbook feel by layering his photos of expats, land mine victims, and genocidal dictator Pol Pot’s brother-in-law (with whom he had an unexpected lunch) with images of ephemera from his trip, including scrawled diary entries, news clippings, bottle caps, a wrapper from opium-laced headache power, and stitches from a car accident that broke his neck. While the story and photos are breathtaking, the process of making the book was revolutionary. Years before digitization would make such collages as simple as point and click, Burke had to meticulously arrange his images to create composites for printing plates. “This was groundbreaking,” Murphy said. “This changed the landscape of what contemporary photo art books can be.”
Between Starshine and Clay
Kelly Taylor Mitchell, A15 (BFA), Atlanta, GA, 2021
Mitchell makes art about herself and her ancestors. As a papermaker, she sometimes incorporates water and fibers from the lands her forebears inhabited, such as milkweed and cypress from the Great Dismal Swamp bordering Virginia and North Carolina, where people who escaped from slavery formed communities. The handmade, hand-embellished pages in this unbound book can be spread out on the table and read in any order, revealing evocative passages such as: “You look like …/ A sun soaked porch,/ Lemonade in an Oak Barrel,/ Playing cards that stick.”
