By TRISH CRAPO
For The Recorder
If you haven’t been inside Federal Street Books, the used bookstore at 8 Federal St. in Greenfield, in a while, it’s worth a look.
The shelves are overflowing with books — literally, not metaphorically. Books are stacked horizontally atop the vertical rows or stacked on the floor in front of the shelves. The jumbled display highlights the staggering array of sizes that books come in, and the varying aesthetics of their covers. Some are sleek and understated, like the Aperture series on photographers; others are loud with lurid sci-fi themes or formal, maybe even a little stuffy, like the old leather-bound classics in the fiction section.
But the books are the least of it. Go to Federal Street Books for the art.
Because all over the store — on the walls and on top of bookshelves, or affixed to them by wires, even lacquered onto some of the shelves themselves — are collages and assemblages that owner and Greenfield resident Tom Swetland has been making for the past 17 years.
In his collages, Swetland merges advertising imagery with news photos, colored paper and other elements to create bizarre visual mosaics that comment on consumerism, political corruption and war. Each collage is a densely-packed world. The varying perspectives of the photos create passages that open into other passages, a visual experience not unlike the physical experience of navigating the narrow aisles of the store.
Swetland takes me on a tour, pointing out various pieces of art, though they call attention to themselves just fine. Not all of the pieces are political. Some are playful and abstract — sort of Salvador Dali meets Salvation Army. Or, Antoni Gaudi meets Mr. Potato Head.
Swetland says he has always liked the surrealists and mentions Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and mosaic artist Simon Rodia, who created the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, Calif., among other influences. While he’s not fond of the term, “naïve art,” sometimes used to describe the work of self-trained artists like himself, he doesn’t mind the phrase, “outsider art.”
Toward the front of the store, he’s got an impressive collection of African masks that can be seen as the precursors to some of the faces he rendered in torn construction paper collage after a recent trip to Cuba, where he saw contemporary art inspired by the Afro-Caribbean religion of Santéria.
Toward the back of the store, on a shelf near the ceiling, two mannequin heads burst with colorful beads and toys, as if in a visual representation of creativity and imagination.
“I love to get heads,” Swetland says. “I went to a rummage sale and bought 13 heads one time.”
Other sources for Swetland’s art include thrift shops and dollar stores. Once they’ve seen his work, people often give him stuff, too, Swetland says, although, “I try not to encourage that too much.”
In some collages, Swetland uses torn paper in varying hues of black, gray and white to create almost photographic portraits, such as the one of Hillary Clinton that straddles one of the aisles. He uses a photo as reference and then he’ll tear up, in this instance, a black and white book to find the right tones.
“I have plenty of books,” Swetland says mildly.
When he bought the business about 10 years ago, the previous owners told him there were 20,000 books, Swetland says.
As for now, “I haven’t got a clue.”
We pause in a back corner to study an assemblage, which includes a plastic baby spilling plastic guts. Swetland says he used a heat gun to melt the baby.
“And what’s the stuff — the innards?”
“Just various plastic things that I had.”
Swetland shrugs. He says he made the assemblage in 2006, when Israel was dropping cluster bombs on Southern Lebanon.
Then he adds, in the kindest voice imaginable, “Sometimes I’m motivated by anger.”
Does making the assemblages help?
“Yeah,” Swetland says. “It does, definitely.”
Swetland says he’s not actively selling his art now, though he might consider that in the future.
“I think once I make this place dense enough, where it’s everywhere, then I’ll probably sell it.”
To me, the place seems pretty dense already. The entire store seems a jam-packed museum of Swetland’s work, with the bookshelves supplying a physical structure for display and the books themselves a background atmosphere of eclectic intellect.
“I’ve actually sold a couple of pieces,” Swetland says. “Somebody insisted, and I did.”
He opens a creaking wooden gate and we descend into the store’s basement. A chess board, with pieces positioned mid-game, hangs upside down from the low ceiling. Swetland points out a large collage he did in 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. A magazine image of Donald Rumsfeld has been altered so that a small skull sits atop each of his fingers.
“And this one is when Obama continued the drone attacks,” Swetland says. “And here’s my dedication to presidents — all of their various wars and such.”
Swetland’s anger is non-partisan. He lists some of the subjects of the small, separately framed pieces. “That’s Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bush Senior, Bush, Clinton, Reagan.”
A few of the collages in the basement were made using computer design software, but Swetland says he’s moved away from that, creating digital collage mainly for practical things now, like business cards or leaflets for the store.
An assemblage behind the bookstore’s front counter resembles a voodoo altar. A red statue rises from a multi-faced head that Swetland says was a planter he bought at Salvation Army. Swetland surrounded these central figures with a myriad array of things: a plastic skull, wooden and plastic beads, animal and super-hero figurines, game parts, google eyes, rubber snakes and spiders, shells, buttons, fake poinsiettas, dolls’ arms and legs — The more you look, the more you see.
The bright red anatomical model of a heart surrounded by firefighters is a nod to the fact that he’d been suffering from chronic heartburn when he made the piece, Swetland says. The heartburn is gone now. Maybe making an assemblage helped that, too.
Where to see it
Federal Street Books, 8 Federal St., Greenfield. Phone: 413-772-6564. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Watch “The Art of Tom Swetland at the Federal Street Book Store,” a film by Philippe Simone with avant garde music by A-Fe, at : www.youtube.com
An un-narrated visual journey through the store, which includes detailed pans of some of the works. Simone’s film originally aired on the show “Sacred Spaces” on Greenfield Community Television.