Nonprofit bookstore showcases local art

Boxcar Books' art is as innovative as the store itself. The store enhanced its community-centered focus by featuring local artists on its walls. Local artists unveiled their work Friday night at the shop's art show opening -- an event from which everyone involved appeared to profit. \nCo-general coordinator Abbey Friedman said Boxcar shows "basically all local art" and does not charge for its space. \nSince artists do not have to pay to show their art there, Boxcar allows many artists an opportunity to put their work on display.\nThere is constantly art on display, but it changes monthly -- as it did Friday night. Though two of the featured artists chose to focus on Albert Camus' "The Stranger," the show itself was unthemed. The variety of drawings, paintings and 3-D pieces (between nine and a dozen) exist both to decorate the store and provide artists with an unconventional venue.\n"(The art show) is good. Boxcar's idea is to create a community art space -- a comfortable place where people can show their art," said Boxcar Art Director Leah Kessler.\nFriday's opening allowed the artists a chance to discuss their work with patrons, though the art will remain in the store until Sept. 23. \nFeatured artwork includes pieces by local artists Sherri Miller, Ryan Woods and Paul Hansbarger. \nFeatured artist Sherri Miller based her showcased pieces on Camus' book, "The Stranger."\n"My pictures are all of one person; I Photoshopped them together (to look like multiple people in one frame) and then made my sketches off that. I wanted to show alienation more than one specific scene from the book," Miller said.\nThough Miller used to attend art school, she just recently began to doodle and "sketch around" again. The show was a chance for her to display her new work to the public.\nThe artists gain in two ways: supporting a local organization while gaining publicity for their work.\n"I'm glad to be doing the show for Boxcar because it's such an egalitarian setting. There is art by great people, art by my friends -- it's very community-oriented," Miller said.\nThe artists' work is unpretentious, nestled between shelves of literature on gender, religion and humanity. In the same way that Miller's pieces conveyed loneliness and the plight of humanity, other works often showed singular objects and people. Paintings and 3-D images of a tree, house or person lined the walls.\nThough the art might have shown the lonelier side of life, the Bloomington community was an undeniable part of the show and everything related to it. A belief that the artists benefit the store, the store benefits the community and thus the artists benefit the community seemed to pervade the voices of those involved in the opening. \nThe link to community is clear in the bookstore's purpose: it is a nonprofit organization that also serves as a community center-- the store operates in conjunction with the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project. \nAccording to Boxcar's Web site, both organizations "exist to promote reading, self-education, social equality and social welfare through increased accessibility to literature and workshops -- and a community to support these projects."\nWith locally-focused but broad-reaching goals in mind, Boxcar began to showcase local artists to give them exposure to the community.\nBoth artists and employees seemed to be truly happy to be involved in something that would help Bloomington.\nFor more information, visit Boxcar's Web site at www.boxcarbooks.org, which features an online store, history and volunteer information. Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project is looking for volunteers (http://pagestoprisoners.org). Boxcar Books is located at 310A S. Washington St.