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“The idea is to experience books in many different ways and to use books as a medium to generate art,” said Books Beyond Borders Partner Ahmed Mohiuddin.

A steady stream of art enthusiasts filed past works by Adria Palinsky, Katie Westmoreland, and Roybert Steve on the first weekend of the studio tour. The setting for the art pieces, an adjunct section of the massive Books Beyond Borders warehouse, is dimly lit but stunning, and eerily quiet on a autumn weekend in East Austin.

Westmoreland’s digital photographs of words and glimpses of words occupy a far wall – actually a chain link fence, alongside photos of curiously bound volumes on the shelf. These images are roughly juxtaposed against Palinsky’s work – stacks and stacks of paperbacks without front covers, on top of which variable-sized, almost pasta-like, rolled-up strips of pages and text lie, with the whole emphasizing text as object, and the page as well as the bound volume as art.

Steve’s work, a few feet away, enshrines two famous American novels from the 20th Century in a unique display: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Pages and the front and back covers of Catch 22 are arrayed in a kind of stepladder, set in notches on wood, and shredded pages of Cuckoo’s Nest have been rearranged and wrapped around books as a sort of aesthetic dust jacket. The whole work is set atop painted pallets and creates an odd sense of reverence not only for the two featured novels, but for the process of writing and creating art in general.

These artists’ pieces will be joined by the works of at least five other artists for the final week of the Studio E.A.S.T. Tour. Art lovers and book lovers alike will be able to enjoy the works this Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 20-21, the tour’s final weekend. Participating artists include Christine Nall, Jeh Haley, Torie Wiley, Paola Guerrero, and Kristen Pumphrey. The artists come from a wide range of backgrounds, including new and established names as well as two University of Texas artists.

Ahmed says the effort is a way of “encouraging people to participate” through creating artwork, viewing the art, or simply by donating books.

Books Beyond Borders collects, sorts, and resells used books and its proceeds go to support Project Schoolhouse, a nonprofit effort that has built and is building grade schools in impoverished areas of Nicaragua.

The warehouse and studios are located on the corner of East Fifth Street and Tillery in East Austin – just west of the Capitol Metro bus yard and just north of Brooke Elementary School.