Appealing Events: Lending Library At Adobe Books

Adobe Bookstore is almost like a bookstore you might see in a movie, if the movie was about an old bookstore seemingly held together by piles of treasures and bursting shelves of old, forgotten but precious books. It’s just too good at being the quintessential kooky bookstore to be missed (and miss it you might, as SFist reports that they’re in danger of closing).

As you wind your way through the long and lovingly scattered one-room store, past the two small enclaves for sitting, reading, sleeping or hanging out with the owner and local character, Andrew McKinley, you’ll arrive at the Backroom Gallery, a bright, intimate gallery complete with a bathroom right in the middle of the space.

The current show, Lending Library, digs into the creative process of the participating artists by using cross-sections of artists’ studios to explore the relationship between what we chose to have around us and what we create.

Although original objects won’t be on display, scans of the artists’ materials will be available to all visitors to take away and appropriate in anyway they see fit. The connections to be made with the objects in the exhibition belong to the audience as much as they belong to the artists.

By examining the creative process of others we can get a better handle on our own; and by exchanging objects and ephemera from our own process with others, we can push ourselves (or others) onto entirely new paths of discovery.

Hokey? Maybe. Worth a try? Absolutely.

Go be a part of this open-ended experiment and while you are at Adobe, buy a book. The world is better off with places like these around.