“The Tie that Binds: Book Arts Group Show” at the Taubman Health Center illustrates art’s ability to turn the ubiquitous into the extraordinary.

University of Michigan book arts instructor Barbara Brown’s students explore contemporary bookmaking as a rarefied form of art in this expansive display, part of the Gifts of Art program at the U-M Health System.

These artists show us what appears to be ordinary is not quite so ordinary after all.

First, consider the beating that books have been supposedly taking at the marketplace. If one was to believe recent reports, books are a dwindling commodity. The presumption is seemingly that we will all be reading electronic tablets at some point in the near future. In fact, some readers of this column may already be doing so.

Yet electronic tablets are merely books of another color. As “The Tie that Binds” shows us (as well as every vinyl LP sold today proves): Books (like long-playing records) are not going to vanish anytime soon. They’re going back to what they’ve always been: forms of art.

Brown’s group proves this in four distinctive types of art book: wire-edge binding; Coptic binding with Plexiglas covering; board binding; and tunnel crafting, where each of these alternative bindings run along the lines of what bookbinders have always done. Only now they’re doing it again in all deliberate style.

As Brown says in her gallery statement, “Within this genre, one might be surprised at combinations of media which have been incorporated to create these pieces—perhaps causing the viewer to question the idea of ‘book’.”

Question, indeed. For what else are sets of pages fastened along one side and (typically) encased between protective covers? Let’s not forget that books run from the finely wrought hand-crafted, jewel-encrusted treasures of the past to deliberately flimsy contemporary paperbacks whose whole purpose is to inexpensively circulate knowledge or narratives.

The 26 art books in this display have been crafted by Brooke Adams, Brianne Burgoon, Jaclyn Benninger, Abigail Bennett, Kassandra Carter, Gabriela Cegelis, Alyssa Chambo, Hye Yeon Cho, Jazmine Clark, Kathleen Eberts, Meghan Forbes, Nora Jane Green, Haley Hoard, Kimberley Karcz, Minji Lee, Kaitline Marek, Anita Sidler, and Laura Thompson. Each artist brings a something a little special to the proceedings.

Among the 10 wire-edged bindings in this show, Abbey Bennett’s “Woman on the Bus” keenly straddles art and text with its narrative and reproduced content. On one side of Bennett’s eight double-sided book panels is a artful narrative describing a passing observational encounter; the back pages are covered by news print in a variety of arrangements.

The binding gives the book a bit of additional space that another sort of binding wouldn’t. This in turn gives the story just enough ironic detachment to propel the reader through the narrative while giving us enough time to study each plate as an artwork in its own right. The result uses wire-binding’s versatility to comment on the difference between the narrator’s subjective perspective and the objectivity of news print.

Nora Jane Green’s slender board book, “Nest,” features six pages that are seemingly a conceptual visual diary. Maybe it’s a sort of wistful journal of maps and constellations in the guise of reminiscence. Perhaps it’s a non-verbal chronicle of aspiration. Or maybe the decisive clue lies in “Nest’s” gold floral leaf cover, where Green has appended a thin sliver of a map coiled on the work’s gesso scrubbed jacket.

Easily the most flamboyant style of bookbinding in this exhibit is the venerable Coptic binding (in this instance) with Plexiglas covering. Of the baker’s dozen of these volumes on display; Minji Lee’s “Audrey Hepburn” is quite memorable. At the least, the book is certainly as memorable as the actress herself—and presumably, this is the point.

The front and back Plexiglas covers of this book feature signature photographic portraits of the famed actress in poses taken from “Sabrina,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and “Charade.” And like the class that Hepburn epitomized, Lee’s book—with its frosted cover adding a hint of allure to Hepburn’s portraits—is also stylish without being cloying.

Finally, there’s only a single tunnel book in this exhibit and it’s easily among the most ambitious artworks on hand. These books look like a series of cardboard sheets standing parallel to one another where all the pages can be viewed from one end. Thus, the finished volume is a “tunnel” crafted accordion-style so that it can be viewed from a single setting.

Alyssa Chambo’s untitled tunnel book is as much a stagey masterwork as it is an art book. The tunnel book’s silver leaf pages essentially illustrate an imaginary proscenium arch running from its background through a curtain to the front section of seats nearest the stage.

Crafting five flies out of her pages (the platforms over the stage used to drop scenery during a performance); Chambo sets recessed mounds of snow, dancing skaters; and equally dancing snowflakes to create a tableau of a single most perfect winter’s day. It’s more than enough to make an artist want to record the event for posterity. And she’s skillfully done so—in a book.

“The Tie That Binds: Book Arts Group Show” will continue through June 13 at the University of Michigan Health System Gifts of Art Gallery—Taubman Health Center South Lobby, Floor 1, 1500 E. Medical Center Dr. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. For information, call 734-936-ARTS.