Artworks With Pages to Be Turned and Savored

Artists have been active in printing and book production in Europe since the Middle Ages, but it was not until the 20th century that the artist’s book — a work of art in book form — came into its own. It happened first in France and Germany with the modern avant-garde and then later in Russia and Italy, where Futurist artists devoted themselves to making experimental books that exploded the assumptions of standard book production.

Artists’ books are usually published in small editions, given the enormous labor involved, and come in a great variety of shapes and forms, as the Islip Art Museum’s new, delightful exhibition “Out of the Incubator” reveals. If you love book art, you shouldn’t miss this show.

“Out of the Incubator” presents a sampling of about 40 artist’s books published during residencies at the Women’s Studio Workshop, a nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by four female artists in Rosendale, N.Y. It has a national reputation as an incubator for artists who make works on paper and especially handmade limited-edition art books. There is also a small display of historical material tracing the organization’s evolution and some collaborative installations in side rooms.

The Women’s Studio Workshop was green before environmentalism became a global fad; it grows plants on a nearby plot of land, harvests them and makes its own paper for use in the studio. Showing here is a reference book with samples of the different sorts of paper the group has made over the years, outlining the seeds, grains and plants used and the time it took to turn them into usable pulp. This show will fascinate those who are interested in paper making as well as lovers of artists’ books.

Taking a few minutes to learn about the paper-making process helps you to appreciate the skill and ingenuity that goes into making the books, which are installed together in the main gallery. It is a wonderful selection, ranging from the early 1980s to the present and including well-known and valuable artists’ books, like Maureen Cummins’s “Business Is Suffering” (2003), which reproduces old American bills of sale for slaves with woodblock images. It is powerful stuff.

Because there is no thematic organization, the best way to view this show is simply to wander about the gallery and stop when something catches your eye. But be prepared to stop often, for there are many interesting, funny and amazing books here, among them Liz Zanis’s “Grandmaclock” (2004), a lovely miniature book in the shape of a clock that was in her grandmother’s home, which opens up to reveal silkscreen pictures on bits of balsa wood strung together.

A book in the form of postcards by Jahjehan Bath Ives tells a sad story about a brother who died of pneumonia. The postcards are assembled in a box and meant to be read in any order, so that the reader slowly builds awareness of what is going on. It takes a while to get used to the format, but the result is intensely affecting.

Playful and humorous books are in abundance. They range from Miriam Schenitzer’s “How to Talk About Art,” an interactive, pop-up book poking fun at opaque art-speak, to Janis Krasnow’s timely “How to Get a Job” (1988), in which she pairs personality types with careers. According to the book, if you are alert, for instance, you would make a good receptionist, while pedantic people should be accountants.

There is also some nutty stuff, like Heidi Neilson’s “Atlas of Punctuation” (2004), for which the artist made letterpress prints of the last punctuation marks of every sentence found in famous books. There is H. G. Wells’s “Time Machine” and Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” but also punctuation marks from books by Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and many others. This is probably the strangest book I have ever seen, though the prints are beautiful.

Of course there is a cookbook, “Good Eats” (2005) by Carissa Carman, with recipes contributed by members of the Women’s Studio Workshop along with little illustrations for each of the dishes. It is cute and fun and probably one of the few books here you could use. Among my favorite-sounding recipes is the Vietnamese-inspired “Magic Rainbow Rolls With Legendary Peanut Sauce.”

Like all the publications here, “Good Eats” was published in a very small edition — 80 copies — and sells for considerably more than an ordinary book ($250). That is because these are artworks first and books second, made to be carefully savored and collected in a deliberate reaction to mass-produced editions. In a digital world, they make a compelling case for print.