Seeing Between the Lines

Redwood City, CA - The artists of the Main Gallery will present a show of Artist's Books that will feature novel books, not novels. Titled Seeing Between The Lines, many of the 25 artists of the cooperative gallery, located at Main and Middlefield in downtown Redwood City, will show their novel concept of books.

According to Jade Bradbury, Los Gatos printmaker and book artist, definitions of an Artist's Book in the 20th Century are various in their range of expression. "In general," Bradbury said, "an Artist's Book is the unique, highly personalized expression made to convey a unified - often intimate - concept through the integration of its structure and content. The visual presentation is the content of the Book, which may or may not resemble conventional ideas about what a book is and can be composed in almost any medium." For the creator of an Artist's Book, Bradbury explained, the visual content often suggests the shape, form or structure the book might take. "This may determine how the book is "read" in either the literal or figurative sense of reading," Bradbury said. "For instance, when the viewer 'sees between the lines' of my book, Silicon Valley Odyssey, the central visual element is a glass-enclosed unit, richly filled with hundreds of colorful laundry tags -- the one's they put on men's shirts. This message is flanked by two attached accordion-style booklets that unbutton to reveal the significance of the accumulation of laundry tags."

Katinka Hartmetz, a Redwood City painter, has made books, which are small jewels of color, based on her original drawings. They are stained glass like designs on clear acetate. Several layers of color combine to create a colorful design and by flipping through the acetate layers you can see the artist's creative process unfolds.

Menlo Park ceramicist, Karen Truesdell, is making Artist's Books from clay impressions from tombstones in the Virginia City Cemetery. The porcelain positives are painted with oils and have a print-like quality. They are mounted on accordion fold wooden stands that carry the text for the clay prints. Susan Wolf, from Los Altos, shares a clay studio with Truesdell. Tea is her subject, with wall-mounted teapots and floating cups spewing out small essays on bits of tea lore.

The Main Gallery is located at 1018 Main Street on the first floor of the 1857 John Offerman House across from the new Redwood City Plaza. Hours are 11 to 4 Wednesday to Friday and 10 to 3 Saturday and Sunday. 650-701-1018. www.themaingallery.org.


©Karen Truesdell	©Susan Wolf


©Kate Curry	©Linda Fillhardt


©Robin V. Robinson	©Kate Curry