Art on the Page: A Selection of Artists' BooksThrough Sept. 27, City Hall, second and fourth floors, 215-683-2078

Do not count on a city employee or a demented loiterer engaged in passionate dialogue with B101 to help you find "Art in City Hall." Informal research indicates that two out of five strollers in the halls of power respond to the query with civility but, though they work within yards of the displays, the helpful guys know next to nothing about the lively and varied program of art in the building.

You can find it. Go to the northeast corner on the ground floor and take the elevators to the second and fourth floors where the 13 display cases are located, then exit onto a corridor running south. Most of the cases are in the next corridor to your right (just a few feet). On the second floor, there are also a couple of cases straight down the hall in front of the elevators.

Though the display cases are miniscule in the sprawl of City Hall, they pack in a lot of art, especially books. The current show, discerningly organized by Jacqueline van Rhyn, curator of prints and photographs at the Print Center, introduces 14 book artists or collaborative teams. Considering that publicly displaying artists' books involves a no-touching compromise, several participants found ways to make their work more accessible. Most generously, James Engelbart actually hung a copy of his brightly colored, pleasantly scary children's book outside the case. You can turn the pages and read the words written upside-down in Engelbart's fanged fantasy creatures' eyes.

Susan Viguers, who writes the poetry in her books, dismantled one, Portrait of a Daughter: Ruth's Room, to display all the pages so we can follow the story of a girl responding to a family crisis. Eriko Takahashi, like many book artists, does not necessarily intend her pages to be viewed sequentially. The square sheets of handmade embossed paper in Running Shadow are laid out to reveal a human figure integrated with the words: "Looking at the soles of the shadow running in front."

Unfortunately, the text of many works, such as Lois Johnson and Barbara Lock's accordion-fold Night Street, is necessarily obscured by the method of display. Nevertheless, the irregular skyline created by the cut-out pages brings the street itself alive on the shelf.

One thing visitors will take from this show is the wide range of definitions of "artists' books" or "book works." A "book" has few boundaries. It is usually small, usually contains a series of images, or pages, and often involves words and at least a hint of narrative. Technically, anything goes, though some are traditionally bound. Real flies float within the amber (resin) covers of Susan White's Fly, which is bound in an old method, using heavy-thread. Using another popular technique, White also alters appropriated books. Christ Crowned Within is pierced with a crown of black thorns. Within the black and gold covers the title metaphor is literally realized.

Denise Carbon precisely composes bold, black wooden gothic type with quirky collage. Martina Johnson-Allen layers intimate, cozy collages and Anabelle Rodriquez documents her classes on book arts for young people with photographs.

Some books are printed in small editions in letter press or offset lithography. Carol Barton's Vision Shifts places crisp black print against a foggy landscape which extends across the accordion-fold work. Illustrating the poem about different cultures, cut-out windows open onto a less muted world. Mary Phelan is showing beautifully realized works that she printed for and with many other writers and artists. Claire Owen's work is particularly satisfying because she balances her story in words with equally effective images. Books for adults rarely offer these simultaneous pleasures.

Also within the scope of this exhibition is an installation by Virginia Batson, erasing war. Above a chair and table with a book with the word "WAR" on its pages, a video depicts Batson painstakingly erasing the words in that very book. Another book is a toy. Viguers' The Universe Tends Toward Disorder is a Jacob's ladder illustrating a wine glass falling to the ground in a sequence of tumbling pictures.

Jungohk Cho suggests architectural forms through inlaid and decorated folding panels that reference Buddhist temples. Cho's cut-out accordion-fold Korean Consents is crisp and ingenious in organization and color.

Suzanne Reese Horvitz and Robert Roesch's books are substantial sculptures. Aluminum, bronze and steel in a series of fan-shaped Love Letters underline the promise of enduring love while sharp angles point to accepted pain. A large book of glass sheets mounted in a steel frame reveals etched references to "pierce enthrallment enslave," contrasting terms which are manifested in the fragile yet powerful materials.

In many forms, books speak across centuries and cultures. I was struck by how often artists used the word "love" in their statements (in the free catalog). This intimacy and commitment produces an art form which is astonishingly accessible to everyone -- especially in City Hall.