Nothing Moments Project

For the "Nothing Moments Project," now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, nearly a hundred writers, artists, and designers were invited to participate in "a collaborative project in art, literature and design." This strangely compelling exhibition collects the results: two dozen limited-edition books and more than 400 drawings. The drawings blanket the walls of the center's main gallery; the books are spread on a table in the middle of the space, with chairs so you can relax and have a look. Each book, we learn from an introduction, began with a writer who created a fiction text, then passed it on to an artist who responded to the material by creating drawings, which were then conveyed to a designer who married text and images. The relay-style technique, according to that intro, "offers an intriguing cross-pollination of the populist sensibility of a book fair with the rarefied atmosphere of contemporary art." There's more, but you get the gist: art as a process, art as a collaboration that messes with the distinctions among disciplines, art as a transcending of individual personality. The books have teasing titles like Shipwrecks & Other Drownings and three boys pose for a camera none of them are looking into and Most Ridiculous and Least Respectable. The images and the designs incorporating them are often arresting on their own terms. The writing, based on bite-sized samplings, intrigues. There's just one big drawback: Who has time to sit down and read 24 books during a museum visit? (On display through January 4 at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison St., Hollywood. Call 954-921-3274.)