In “Shelflife,” a series of collages, artist...

In “Shelflife,” a series of collages, artist Kathi Martin explores “how consumerism and media hype alter your self-image.”

“Shelflife,” on display through December at the El Camino College library, tells the story of nine people in a store from their points of view, said Martin, a West Hills artist and poet.

The roles examined include the store owner, the clerk, customers, parents and children. Each work is encased in a three-foot-long rectangular wooden box with a glass front, similar to the packaging used for dolls.

Inside the boxes are collages created with ink etchings of dolls, fans made of paper from a centuries-old French factory, and objects such as rusty bottle caps, pieces of bamboo and negatives of old photographs.

No two viewers are likely to interpret the works in the same way.

“I want to celebrate individuality and watch people giddy and tiptoey, panting with effort,” Martin said of her works.

The text along the side of each box, which can only be read by tilting one’s head, offers viewers “a more intimate and optional” opportunity to consider her art, Martin said.

The Clerk, for example, spends each day “double-focusing on sweet-beeping registers and flat pre-answered questions, stretching sales tapes to bestow Proof-of-Purchase-confetti on expectant sales warriors.”

Alongside another box, one can read about the Parrot: “Aching to buy her babies the world in colorfast shrink wrap, she settles on a Bargain Bin Bonanza of Out-of-Season Seconds.”

Martin’s “Shelflife” series is on display in the lobby of the El Camino College Library along with four of her earlier works, which hang above the library’s card catalogue.

Ed Martinez, the college’s public access librarian, said because the library is centrally located on campus, “students who might not normally look at art can see it here.”

The library selects 10 artists each year from more than 100 applicants and displays their work for a month in the lobby. Of Martin’s work, Martinez said, “The toylike, play-like quality to her art seemed to symbolize a lot of things going on at Christmastime.”

The library and its exhibit are open without charge Monday through Thursday from 7:45 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.