ReadyMade Magazine - October/November 2008

review

Big Box Reuse by Julia Christensen (MIT Press)

Abandoned big-box stores are the shuttered steel factories of our day, with one major exception: Economic downturn isn’t always the reason for the door-closings. Some stores are simply replaced when bigger “ super-centers” open down the road. And so, now-empty Wal-Marts and Kmarts litter the American landscape. One positive outcome is that citizens have reappropriated and transformed the vacant buildings into senior centers, churches, libraries, and museums (including one for everyone’s favorite lunch meat, Spam, no less). Big Box Reuse chronicles these inspiring adaptations, proving that resourcefulness and creativity can renew communities— even if that renewal happens within big square shells. —Matt Dorville

Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov (Chronicle Books)

Highly influenced by ReadyMade’s patron saint, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, a new generation of artists, designers, and crafters has risen to prominence over the past decade, using mass-produced, off-the-shelf objects as their medium. Manufractured offers a comprehensive survey of the diverse array of works to emerge from the movement—including sculptures carved from lipstick and a dress made exclusively of zippers—coupled with photos and essays. For those interested in the ever-expanding canon of post-purchase creative reuse, the book is a coffee-table essential—especially if the coffee table in question began its life as something else. —Nicole Jaureguy

Bands on the Road: The Tour Sketchbook by Silke Leicher and Manuel Schreiner (Thames & Hudson)

Road trips are a rare treat—idyllic stretches of open space that provide us with plentiful time to daydream and a surplus of sights to be seen. Which is why Bands on the Road, a bound collection of artwork created by touring musicians, is a transporting read: Writers Silke Leicher and Manuel Schreiner equipped bands like Belle and Sebastian, Bloc Party, and We Are Scientists with paper, felt-tip pens, and crayons, asking them to sketch the scenery observed during their treks. The result? A visual journey that’s well worth taking. —Ilana Diamond

Place Space (volumes 1-4) by Todd Oldham (Ammo)

Place Space, a new series of books by ReadyMade contributing editor Todd Oldham, is devoted to off-the-wall interiors. The first four installments feature director John Waters’s zany abode, creative off-campus housing at the Rhode Island School of Design, Joseph Holtzman’s Camp Nest compound, and Bedrock City, Arizona’s Flintstones-themed tourist stop. Brimming with saturated full-bleed photos, wrapped in book jackets that unfurl into posters, and accompanied by commentary from such outspoken personalities as Amy Sedaris, Michael Graves, Camille Paglia, and Cindy Sherman, the volumes offer a welcome respite from more typically published photo books of perfectly styled pads. —MD

ALL MY LITTLE WORDS
Make space for small books.
by Jonathan Kiefer

Books do furnish a room, as the novelist Anthony Powell wrote in one (a book, that is, and presumably a room). But what to do when our rooms have become as small and crowded as our Web 2.0-addled attention spans? Keep collecting books, of course, just wee ones.

As it turns out, the literature of littleness is huge. Be they ledgers, manifestos, cleverly repackaged classics, or dimly familiar but persistent epics, minibooks are everywhere.

New York City’s Printed Matter (printed matter.org), a nonprofit bookstore-as-art-space and public reading room, shelves a dizzying array of artists’ books, including many very small ones.

London’s TankBooks (tankmagazine. com/tankbooks) are “tales to take your

breath away” in boxes that resemble cigarette packs (pictured at left).

TreeFeathers ( treefeathers.com), in Albuquerque, New Mexico, takes the scale-model approach, crafting penny-sized replica tomes.

Poems-for-All ( sacfreepress.com/ poems) is an ongoing series of free miniature chapbooks meant to be “scattered like seeds by those who want to see poetry grow in a barren cultural landscape.” (Full disclosure: I wrote one.)