Taking pages out of her book

When Annie Silverman discovered a 1957 copy of the ''New Century Dictionary of the English Language" in her elderly neighbors' trash, she did not envision it would lead to a project involving more than 50 artists and writers from five countries and nine states.

Her discovery resulted in an art show that challenges artists and viewers to consider the relationship between oral and visual communication. The show, ''The Dictionary Project," can be seen at the Brickbottom Gallery through next weekend.

When she launched the ''Dictionary Project" early last year, Silverman asked friends and fellow artists to take pages from the dictionary and incorporate the material into pieces of original art. Most participants are local, but word spread about the project, and the Somerville artist found it had international appeal.

''It's really about friendship. There are a lot of different networks of people involved," said Silverman.

As an experimental printmaker and a self-described ''trash investigator," Silverman said she noticed the old dictionary because of its odd design: a red three-hole-punched binder, printed with gold flowers and red-and-green geometric designs, holding more than 2,000 pages.

''It was a book, with a rope around it," Silverman said, reflecting on how she found the dictionary while rushing to her studio one winter morning. ''I thought, 'Hmm, this is interesting.' So, I threw it in the car and ran away."

The dictionary, also on display as part of the show, shows signs of extensive use, with worn edges and tape holding the binding together.

The artists whose work can be seen in the show range in age from 21 to 85. Some are professionals, others students in their first show. Many already incorporate words into their art, according to Silverman.

The works of Silverman, who counts writing among her artistic achievements, have been included in shows from Boston to South Africa. She has worked with middle-school students and has taught at Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Bennington College in Vermont.

''I went to art school when I was 30, so I have juggled teaching and studio work for the past 20 years," Silverman said.

For the dictionary project, she distributed some pages randomly and others by request for specific words, according to Silverman. One friend asked for the word ''trickster," intending to make a collage in memory of her recently deceased father.

Maggie Dubris, a writer and professional hypnotist who lives in New York, said the project offered an opportunity to express herself as a visual artist.

''I'm very inspired by words and word history," she said. ''I feel like a lot of our history is carried in language."

Dubris, who contributed six works to the show, centered one on the wren, which she called a ''supermythological bird" that appears often in ancient poetry and folk rhymes.

Likening her work to folk tales, Dubris said she tried to evoke a sense of how language is carried through history and added to by every generation and culture.

''I was thinking of how layers of time and memory work," she said. ''We can see through things to things that came before."

Many of the works in the show prominently feature the dictionary pages, with specific words playing into images; in others, the pages seem an afterthought. In some, artists have used pages to create sculptures or origami cranes. Several pieces feature pages that have been shredded and woven back together.

''It shows the diversity of artists' minds," Silverman said.

For her own part in the project, Silverman chose the page with the definition of ''angel" on it and used wood blocks to isolate certain words.

''It was harrowing to just have one copy of the pages, since I did not at that point know about printing with plates and repeating the image," Silverman said. ''I also sort of enjoyed the risk involved with the single copy of the word I wanted."

She also made a second piece, ''Sometimes a Seed," for which she created a woodcut with several images from the dictionary -- also woodcuts -- that showed an archer taking aim at various seed pods, evoking an impression of the start of spring.

Silverman said she hopes to continue working on the project.

''There are still many pages left," she said. ''I have a secret stash of pages that I have pulled out that I am especially enchanted with and recently made a goal for myself of doing a body of my own work based on various dictionary pages."

''The Dictionary Project" can be viewed at the Brickbottom Gallery in the Brickbottom Artists Building, 1 Fitchburg St., Somerville, Thursday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m., through Saturday.