A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery
126 Main Street
Northampton, MA 01060

Phone: 413.586.5553
Fax: 413.387.6027

Gallery Hours:
Tues. – Thurs. 12-5
Fri. – Sat. 12-8
Sun. 12-5
Closed on Mondays


    

The Library is a flexible entity containing a growing number of interconnected collections of objects, writings, and creations. The concept of A.P.E.'s Library is based loosely on a model created by Richard Brautigan's 1966 classic work of fiction The Abortion:

We register all the books we receive here in our Library         Contents Ledger. It is a record of all the books we get day     by day, week by week, month by month, year by year.         [...] We don't use [...] any index system to keep track of     the books. [...][W]e give the book back to its author             who is free to place it anywhere he wants in the library, on     whatever shelf catches his fancy.
 It doesn't make any         difference where a book is placed because nobody ever         checks them out and nobody ever comes here to read them.
This is not that kind of library. This is another kind of library.

The Library has recently been given a remarkable body of work collected by artist and author Phyllis Kornfeld, and described in her book Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America, published by Princeton University Press in March 1997.

The Cell Block Visions collection includes drawings, paintings, and objects made within the last twenty years by inmates of jails and penitentiaries in six states. Included are "decorative" art forms such as handkerchief art and decorated envelopes. Also featured are prison folk arts such as soap carvings, cigarette wrapper purses, toothpick clocks, and toilet paper sculpture. Paintings and drawings by self-taught artists in the collection have been illustrated in a variety of publications and shown in prominent galleries.

The Library also houses an extensive collection of Mail Art from around the world, collected by HAMMER during the nineteen sixties and early seventies.