Remember what it was like as a kid when you opened a pop-up book? Remember the wonder and excitement you experienced as characters or scenes literally sprang to life before your eyes?

Those pop-up books could be considered a commercialized version of an artist book. While artists’ books may take on elements of a traditional book (pages, spine, cover, etc.), they are complex, often three dimensional handmade works of art that may or may not contain any words at all.

Artists’ books incorporate many mediums including various types of paper, watercolors, colored pencils, printmaking, sculpture, stitching with threads or other fibers, and others, to tell a story, or convey an artist's sentiments on a particular subject.

Artists’ books take on many forms. They may be an interlocking accordion or a tunnel map. Some may fold out, comprising many folds, while others may open like a paper fortune teller. The possibilities are endless.

The current exhibition at the Maine Fiberarts Center & Gallery in Topsham would be an excellent place to take in some of those possibilities.

Twenty-two Maine artists have works in the “Handmade Artists' Books: One of a Kind,” show, which runs through Sept. 30. Sandra Barry of West Boothbay Harbor and Sarah S. Harvey of Woolwich are two local artists in the show.

Both Barry and Harvey studied book arts with Rebecca Goodale, program coordinator of the Kate Cheney Chappell '83 Center for Book Arts, at University of Southern Maine. You may have seen a few of Goodale's artist books in her show this summer at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Sandra Barry is an artist and an oyster farmer at Ebenecook Oyster Co. in West Boothbay Harbor. It comes as no surprise that an artist would farm several oyster varieties with colorful shells and that they would become both muse and subject of a trio of artists' books. Two of these book are in the Maine Fiberarts exhibit, “All Oysters Great & Small” and “Chaucer's First Oyster.”

To create “All Oysters Great & Small,” Barry used what she refers to as “altered books,” by soaking, in this case, a 6 by 9-inch hardcover book in water. Once saturated, she removed the cover and let the pages dry out. In doing so, Barry said she is giving them “new life.”

Once dry, Barry drew an outline of the oyster shell and sculpted it to resemble an oyster. Pages are glued together. Stitching, typically a basic running stitch or blanket stitch, is added around the edges for both texture and embellishment.

The “pearls” inside are ring-shaped pieces of Japanese paper connected by a tapestry-weight thread. The pearls were then painted in watercolors with oysters and seaweed.

“Chaucer's First Oyster” actually has the main book binding and can open and close like a book. The inside of the shell is painted in watercolor of various shades of purple and striping, which mirrors some of the farm's shellfish.

The third was made from a dictionary and has a small sculptured pearl that can be removed.

Barry, like most artists' book makers, enjoys incorporating multiple disciplines in her books. Barry also works in printmaking, mixed media, textiles and metal, but artists' books have been her primary artistic focus for the last two years.

“I've always been in love with fiber, paper and material,” Barry said. “I've been fortunate; both my mother and grandmother were expert weavers, knitters and master embroiderers .... And Rebecca Goodale has been my professor, and a great mentor.”

Creating art with her hands, and the connection she makes with the materials, history of the craft, and the people she has met results in an emotional, tactile and mindful collaboration that comes together for her.

Over the past two years Barry has created 30-plus books, although not all are ready for exhibition. Some are finished books and some are books created while working through particular binding. In her classes at USM, she has to produce five to eight completed books per class.

“It's interesting when you experiment with a process; you begin to engage with it and it takes on a life of its own,” Barry said. “By experimenting with materials I learn a lot about my subject, the mediums, and about myself.”

Sarah Harvey

Sarah S. Harvey was a nurse “in her former life” who decided to trade in her stethoscope for brushes and paints and spend the rest of her life making art. She returned to school attending USM where she earned a BA in painting in 2001. She began making artists’ books in 1998, learning from Goodale. For the past five years, she has been part of an artist's books critique group at USM.

She has two books in the show. One reflects the inspiration she derives from adventures in nature and the other her meditation practice. Like most of her books, these both contain text. Her accordion book, “Seeking Happiness,” contains a Buddhist mantra she has been concentrating on committing to memory:

“May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.

May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.

May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.

May we dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and prejudice.”

“When you start a book, sometimes you know what you want it to look like, and other times it just evolves. This one evolved,” Harvey said of “Seeking Happiness.”

“As I started printing the pages, I saw the word happiness worked at the bottom of the pages popped out at me. We're all seeking happiness, and the golden appearance of the paper, and the red and gold on the cover, are Buddhist colors for shrine rooms and robes ... as well as being colors that capture your attention.”

The book cover is a cream paper adorned with red and gold, colors found in Buddhist shrines. Red, among other things, symbolizes the life force, and gold, or yellow, denotes stability and a grounded nature. The energy contained in these colors sparks an emotional response.

The book is composed of several different types of paper, including a yellow, oily looking one she chose to print the mantras on. Each of the 10 book pages/accordion folds contains a series of strips about 3/8-inch wide bearing the mantra, printed vertically seven times. Each strip folds up, similar to a Roman shade, and when closed, it is square shaped.

All of the elements contained in this inspirational artist's book are tightly connected — physically, conceptually, emotionally and aesthetically.

When “Seeking Happiness” was included in her USM book group's show at the Portland Public Library this spring, Harvey created additional mantra strips, which she hung near the exhibit for visitors to take if they wished.

“I had to keep replenishing them, which I found pretty interesting,” Harvey said.

Her art has deepened her connection with nature because it has made her an observer.

“I'm not always looking for something to make a book out of, but if I find something that intrigues me ....”

Of late, a little family of gray foxes that have been in her sights while outdoors has her intrigued. They just might join some of Harvey’s past artist’s book subjects — a family of woodcocks, sandpipers and wasps — among many others. 

Like Barry, Harvey enjoys the hands-on sculptural nature of artist's book making; it’s all about the construction.

“You're putting various ideas together, images and various text, papers .... I used to make porcelain vases and used my hands in a sculptural way. Artists’ books are as close to that as I can get without using clay.”

For more on Harvey, visit sarahsharvey43.com.

Maine Fiberarts Center & Gallery is located at 13 Main Street in Topsham. For more information, visit www.mainefiberarts.org or call 207-721-0678.

Related: Rebecca Goodale’s artful focus on nature at CMBG