In 2006, Marianne Perlak left her post as HUP’s longtime art director to return to her first love, the fine arts. Now her folded books and wall constructions are represented at Chapter Two in Corea, Maine. Her altered books were the subject of a show last spring at the Wellesley Free Library. Most recently, her transfigured Dartmouth Bible won the Book Arts Category at the New England Book Show. Above: The Calligrapher, by Edward Docx
Perlak became a book designer by way of Pratt Institute and an MFA from the Boston Museum School/Tufts University. Initially attracted by a deliberate, stage-by-stage process that recalled the printmaking that had been her academic focus, she practiced book design at Ginn and Company, a children’s textbook publisher, and at Xerox College Publishing before joining Harvard University Press as a designer in 1975. Perlak became HUP’s first art director in 1986, and remained with us for twenty years. She and her husband, HUP author Rob Paarlberg, now live part-time on the Schoodic Peninsula in Maine.
Recently, Perlak agreed to talk with us about the inspiration for her art, the connection between book design and her current work, and about what kind of book begs to be transformed.
Q. Which came first for you—designing books, or making book art? How does the content of a book inform the way you fold it?
I'm not at all sure I would have explored book as art object if I had not first spent years designing books to be read. My first foray into a new expression involved a bucket of white acrylic paint and a mission to mask subject matter and readability (image left). With no disrespect intended, it provided a balance to the kind of nuance and attention to detail that is the designer's professional world. Later, when I stopped designing books and focused my attention on art, I found myself once again enticed by the notion of planning and measuring, this time to create sculptural forms from the books themselves. Concerning content, a non-linear novelist will probably end up with an asymmetrical design, but in general, content gives way to pure form.
Q. For you, how does the relationship between the content of a book and its transfigured version differ from the relationship between a book and a cover image you have designed?
There is a huge difference. A book jacket is all about being true to content whereas the folded book has become something else entirely. I go back and forth in allowing the title and author to be revealed on the binding.
Occasionally, I rebind a book and cover the title to focus only on the shape and texture.
Right: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Q. What’s your process for making these pieces?
First, the search for books! Hundreds are available at library sales, secondhand stores but I've become very discerning over the binding (must be Smyth sewn), good malleable paper and other physical attributes. I conjure how a particular book might best be folded and start a process of counting, measuring and sampling (on other books). I try out the various calculations and sketches for a book on a sheet of paper that ends up looking like the Rosetta Stone. Then I'm ready to measure and mark each page (a precise guide to the folding). Some bindings are removed to facilitate the folding, then reattached; nearly all will have hand made marbled paper end sheets glued in; most will be stained top and bottom. Finally, the folding process itself is soothing and in fact, takes less time than all the other preparations. And that is when I listen to audio books.
Q. What are your thoughts about transforming a book, which is more or less a storage device for thoughts, into something that is a visual artifact—changing a book from a conceptual object to a physical one? Has the development of e-books informed your work at all? Below: Stories by Jack London
How many of us remember when our school textbooks were passed on from year to year? You might get a reading text with your sister's name in it from two years earlier. Books were precious; we were told not to deface them or bend the pages to mark our place. Now, the notion of “precious” is replaced by the knowledge that most information can be had on the internet or downloaded from a central source. Of course, I hope that there will always be books deemed special and saved by individuals or institutions, but in general, I think the attitude towards the bound book has changed. It's no longer the only storage device for thoughts. With that in mind, I certainly have lost any sense of guilt when transforming a book.
I like the notion of "visual artifact". Lately, I have been paying attention to a book's subject matter, particularly arcane reference books from the 1930s or 40s found on dusty old shelves that simply have no practical use in today's e-world. They are begging to be transformed. I'm also attracted to the classics, as though immortalizing them into sculpture further emphasizes their enduring importance. These titles remain on the original binding.
I'm not sure how I want to react to e-books in relation to this body of work except as a reassurance that the original words and thoughts will always be there even though a bound book has been transformed to art object.
