Book Art at the Albany Airport

It was alternately delightful and maddening to see some artwork made from books when I was recently at the Albany (International!) Airport. "The Imaged Word" exhibition is currently on display in third floor Airport Gallery until January 9, 2011 and can be viewed daily from 7 am to 11 pm.

There were some cool paintings modeled after vintage paperback covers...



And this obsolete reference volume hanging with its guts falling out over the gallery staircase...


This photograph of artfully arranged antique schoolbooks made me wince.
And made my spine hurt.


This artwork of beetle and scorpion cut out from otherwise undamaged and still relevant photography seemed like wanton destruction of two good books. There are certainly many other crappier books that could have been sacrificed to the insect art gods.


Phrases from a poem adorned the surfaces of these decorative objects.


A book arch of unjacketed books by Aaron T. Stephan, entitled "Building Bridges", was fun to inspect up close. I couldn't make out any of the titles as no spines were facing out. This certainly takes the wind out of my sails about my sometime-in-the-future project to construct something similar out of the 50+ copies of Robert James Waller's overpublished bestseller "The Bridges of Madison County" that reside in a corner of our store basement.



Artists in "The Imaged Word" exhibit include Fern Apfel, Gabe Brown, Gayle Johnson, Paul Katz, Scott McCarney, Amy Podmore, Fawn Potash, William Ransom, Aaron T. Stephan, Robert The, and Barbara Todd. It's well worth checking out the exhibition if you find you are waiting for a delayed flight. The Airport Gallery is on the public side of the terminal, soif you are a passenger you would need to inspect it before you take off your shoes and get super-scanned by airport security.