What's saving your place in the book you're reading right now? My copy of Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut's last novel and my present choice of reading material, holds a marker that I bought when I was probably 9 years old. It's got that famous photo of a cute calico kitten hanging on to a rope for dear life. You know the one. Below, it reads "I'll hang on 'til you get back." It resurfaced in my life a few months ago; it's lost its blue yarn tassel, but it still does the job. There are much more intellectual, much fancier, bookmarks to be had, though.

This year marks the sixth round for The Koffler Gallery's Bookmark Project, a competition that asks visual artists to design and create a unique (and functional) bookmark. The best of those submitted will be distributed in the thousands of books at the 30th Annual Jewish Book Fair, to be held in November in the Leah Posluns Theatre Lobby, at the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre.

Read on for this year's theme and submission information.

This year's theme is "Parallax", and hopes to emphasize the bookmarks paradoxical role in every reader's life. The call for submission reads:

"It [the bookmark] is at once a partner to the reader, while remaining intimately engaged with the physical text; it is a mediator between the reader and the book, and yet it does not arbitrate conflict; it is silent as it promotes information; it is transient and in constant motion, but certainly a point of stability in an otherwise constant flux of information processing. Indeed the bookmark's nuanced role has a parallactic effect: its very position and purpose appears to vary when viewed from different perspectives."

And you thought it was just a bit of paper!

Deadline for submissions is October 1st, 2007.
Artists must submit two copies of their bookmark, plus a short written statement relating your design with this year's theme, an artist statement, and a C.V.
For more info, contact curator Danielle Williams at bookmarkproject2007@hotmail.com.