KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) - Book artist Marvel Maring loved her artist books so much she took them to bed with her.
“I would take the new books that I just made and put them on my bedside table and fall asleep looking at them adoringly,” she said. “They were magical. I think it’s the intimacy of the object as well as the familiarity of this thing we grew up with - and engage with - everyday. To actually make one transformed everything.”
Trained as a painter, Maring became disenchanted with her art after years of graduate school.
“My brain was completely fried,” she said of her experiences studying art in a formal way. “I went through one of the darkest artist’s blocks that seemed like it would last forever. It was hellish. It was like my brain had been split open and the contents dumped on the floor.”
All that changed after Maring attended a class on creating artist books, works of art that use the form of a book or a book-like object, usually one of a kind. The results of that work can be seen as part of the “Nebraska Now” series at the Museum of Nebraska Art. Maring’s show, “Nebraska Now: Marvel Maring, Artist Books,” continues through June 28.
The exhibit contains artist books as well as scrolls, the Kearney Hub (https://bit.ly/1ImasGB ) reports.
Maring’s love of books extends through her current career - as a director of a branch of the Omaha Public Library system. She combines her love of traditional books with books that explore a visually creative direction.
Museum of Nebraska Art curator Teliza Rodriguez considers the “Nebraska Now” series as a way to exhibit living Nebraska artists, either in their early, mid or late careers.
“We’re asking them to exemplify what the series says, ’Nebraska Now,’” Rodriguez said. “We get well vetted work and art that people are working on, literally, two or three weeks before the show opens. I like that because it gives us a taste of what’s going on in the arts in Nebraska.”
Maring said she works on her artist books, the scrolls and her two-dimensional paintings at the same time.
“There are times when sewing is really meditative,” she said. “That may not be the same energy I use when I’m building something. A lot of times I have everything in different stages.”
Maring took inspiration from the healing scrolls found in the Coptic tradition of North Africa.
“They all feed off of each other,” she said of her artistic processes. “Sometimes I want to sand (the wooden book covers) or do something very mundane or repetitive. I always try to learn something new.”
Maring talked about the headband of one of her books, the piece of cloth that creates an edge along the cover of the book.
“One thing I love about books is that there are so many references to the human body,” the book artist explained. “There’s the head, the tail and the spine. The physicality of the binding feels very human to me.”
The first book she ever made still holds a place of honor in her home.
“It used Japanese stab binding,” Maring said. “They’re not very practical but they are very beautiful. The spine is exposed. It never opens flat. They are often used for ledgers or receipt books but they are not a structure that lends itself to an artist book.”
That first book took Maring on a journey of creative discovery.
“It was revolutionary for me at the time,” she said. “Finally I was having fun making things. It just opened things up and slowly my art started to work again.”
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