Running mainly with the two simple phrases “This is a book” and “This is not a book,” the exhibit was “intended to spark a dialogue about whether the book can translate into electronic abstraction,” according to its website and Facebook page. It featured images of men and women holding their personal devices with whichever phrase represented their opinion, and reflected how individual people felt about the transformation of the book.

“In a lot of ways, my exhibit was not so much about creating a book or creating something like that, but it was creating a conversation about what is a book and, is the book being redefined, and if so what do you think about that?” said Baker.

Perhaps somewhat uniquely, Baker identifies not as an artist, but as a bookmaker.

“In a way, I’m one of the last members of a generation that remembers a time before computers,” he said. “I have that traditional allegiance to bookmaking; I know what a book is.”

Baker began making books in the 1960s during the small press movement, when a group of talented but lesser-known writers preferred to print and distribute their own works to a smaller audience. Baker joined them initially as a poet, then later became a writer and bookmaker.

“Whenever you’re doing that, the books are very fine. The papers are handmade papers, and sometimes we would ask the authors to give us an old shirt or a pair of jeans or something like that and we would make the cover stock out of their clothing,” he said. “So they were, in a lot of ways, artist-type books.”

Although he describes himself as a bookmaker, Baker also studies graphic design, and needed to find a way to harmonize those different aspects of his personality. The idea for In and of Itself was born when Baker began thinking critically about the actual definition of a book.

“There’s a great term, a great quote from – I forget who it is now – that says ‘It doesn’t seem fair that you can wake up for something you can’t define,’” he said. “And so I started thinking about, well, what is a book then?”

According to Baker, books are primarily made up of two things: container and content. Both were represented in the title In and of Itself. “In itself” referred to the content, or the actual material, ideas and information presented inside the book. “Of itself” referred to various nontraditional uses for the book unrelated to reading, such as propping up objects or swearing on bibles.

“[There was] a great rivalry between Emerson and Melville, and Melville had gone to Oxford to read… some original Emersons and he read them all, and couldn’t believe the guy, thought he was terribly ignorant. And there was a famous quote about him saying that he would ‘brain him with one of his big heavy books.’ So we can [also] use the book as a weapon,” he said.

Baker went on to explain that the book has evolved several times since its inception, previously having been cuneiform, pictograms and hieroglyphs before remaining as we know it today. Ever since Constantine around the year 200-300, books have been in their modern form: a codex, with pages that can be flipped backwards and forwards, open at one side, and browsed at will. Baker believes that e-books could possibly be the newest shift.

“From 200 to now, we have looked at this format and said ‘That’s a book.’ And it’s not been a question, it’s in a certain way, an objective truth… Until a guy named Vannevar Bush, who sort of claimed the idea that we could create text with a solid string of characters, and that’s what spawned XML and HTML,” he said. “And that was the evolutionary language much like cuneiform was to pictograms or hieroglyphs that caused the container to evolve. And so I think we’re back into one of those situations where the container is evolving along with the language, to have a different structure.”

To delve further into showing how books have taken new roles, Baker developed an app for the iPad called iSwear, reflecting the bible’s nontraditional role of being sworn on. The app launches what appears to be a bible with gold text, and when the user places all five fingers on the screen, it begins recording to allow the user to record their promise. After the fingers are removed, the promise can be played back and even uploaded to Facebook.

So does Baker believe that his app, iSwear, is a book?

“You’re swearing on a book – it could be a book – but you’re also swearing on Angry Birds, and you’re also swearing on your email, and you’re also swearing on all the really bad things you’ve looked at on here,” he said. “For me, no… that’s not a book.”

After graduating with his Master’s degree, Baker, who currently works at the Southern Ohio Museum, hopes to find a job teaching foundational-level art classes at a small university. After In and of Itself, he stresses that there is no correct definition of the book; everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that paper books as well as e-books could both be considered “books.” But for him, to be considered a book, it must meet one particular requirement.

“This is nothing else but this,” he said, pointing to a paper book in his hand,  “and it can never be anything else but this. And for me, that’s what a book is.”

All images borrowed from This is a book. This is not a book.‘s Facebook page, and are therefore not mine, nor do I claim any credit for or affiliation with them. For more on Darren Baker, check out his exhibit’s page online. To see some graduate exhibitions for yourself, click here for the current schedule.

All images provided courtesy of the artist.

Paige Wright has never known a life without art.

“I’ve been making art since… always,” she said. “Art has never been something like ‘Oh, what am I going to make now?’ It’s always been like ‘Oh, I want to figure out what this does, and I want to see if this is this and I’ll do a watercolor tomorrow.’ I don’t choose it, it’s just kind of chosen me.”

On April 24, the 29-year-old Ceramics master’s student’s time at Ohio University culminated with the showing of her graduate thesis exhibition, A Built Understanding. The exhibit ran until May 5^th in the Ohio University Art Gallery, located at 536 Seigfred Hall.

The display, which reflected Wright’s past three years in graduate school, featured large head busts of herself and family members. It explored how individuals can answer questions about themselves through art, and “use art as a tool to ask the bigger questions,” like finding an identity.

“A Built Understanding is kind of this more purposeful, more kind of particular voice, I would say, talking about why I make and what I make and what I’m interested in as a maker,” said Wright.

Wright began making the pieces in this particular show over winter break, using a skeletal structure made of pipe. Clay was then spread over the pipe, and details were added or taken away as needed.

“You make marks and react to them, so if it needs to be cut out, or more added onto it, that’s the beauty of clay,” said Wright. “You can do many things.”

The graduate thesis exhibitions are held every year to showcase the work of third-year graduate students in the Master of Fine Arts program. A thesis topic is chosen during the second year, and the third year is spent creating artwork for the show. Nearly 20 exhibitions were included this year in fields such as printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, painting, graphic design, photography and integrated media.

Now that she has graduated, Wright’s first order of business is hitting the road. She and her boyfriend are going on a road trip, and although Wright has a possible job opportunity close by, one goal tops the rest.

“I really want to start my own studio practice,” she said. “It would just be another way of finding out who I am by what I need and how I need to be a maker, and kind of have that bare minimum be built upon.”

For more on Paige Wright, visit her website The Wright Clay. There are plenty of thesis exhibitions still to come, so check out the schedule and go see a few!