That Place on Grand, Chariton, Iowa

The Death of Books is now featured at That Place on Grand in Chariton, Iowa, located at 118 North Grand. This is an eclectic store that offers antiques, consignment items, new products, and gently used articles.

I am happy to be able to display this body of conceptual art in part of the store's main display windows - giant glass panes at street level of this old brick building built in 1894 for the Knights of Pythias Lodge. It's a great location on the east side of the square at the foot of the Lucas County courthouse. 

These are the very last pieces of the conceptual book art that was originally displayed at the Des Moines Arts Festival in 2012, and again at Greater Des Moines Exhibited at the Polk County Heritage Gallery in 2013, where I received a Special Mention. If you have seen this work before and passed up the opportunity to purchase one for your own library, don't miss your chance now to own a truly one-of-a-kind piece of art.

I love books. I love to read them. I love to hold them.   
I confess … I am a book sniffer.

This body of work represents my sadness for

the fact that we don’t open dictionaries anymore. Spell check has made the entire next generation practically incapable of spelling. Word programs on our computers not only flag a word for being spelled incorrectly, it will correct it for us. Our smart phones automatically anticipate the word we might be starting to type, and then will finish spelling it for us.

Dictionaries once held a position of power and authority in the library. Usually the largest book in the building, it was sometimes grandly displayed on an oak podium. I wanted to create artwork that would illustrate the fact that we never open these great old books anymore. These were once our doorways to knowledge – we opened a book to find answers. Not just dictionaries, but encyclopedias and many other reference books.

Now, with e-readers, even printed fiction books are in danger. It was just in 2011 that Amazon.com announced that they sell more e-books than they do paper books. 2010 was the last year that Encyclopedia Brittanica printed their beautifully bound sets for your library shelves. We just no longer open paper books as much as we once did – for pleasure or for research. 

I have collected many antique dictionaries over the years, and I actually use them. I like to see how the definition of a word has changed over one hundred years. I knew I had a duplicate of a 1949 Webster’s, so The Death of Books began with one of those copies. I attached antique doorknobs to the book in a way so that they no longer turned, to show that we don’t open these old books anymore. After I did that, I decided that it simply wasn’t tragic enough – it wasn’t traumatic enough to express how strongly I felt. So I decided the noble thing to do was to put this book out of its misery. I didn’t want this antique dictionary to die a death of neglect on the shelf, or worse yet, in a box somewhere getting dusty. I wanted to elevate it to the height of conceptual art in the hopes that someone else would put it out on their desk or their coffee table and have this discussion with someone else. So I shot it. I euthanized my antique dictionary to give it an honorable death.

This body of work includes many reference books, as well as several groupings of fiction. Each piece is completely one-of-a-kind. All of them have doorknobs that seal their fate. All of them have their own toe-tag hanging from a knob that details their name (book title), DOB (date of birth), DOD (date of death), Place of Death, and Cause of Death (homicide). Every piece is unique and includes an evidence bag that contains the round that went through that book, along with the brass casing found at the scene. Some of the books have the bullet in situ, or in position, trapped inside the book.

There are other issues at play in this conceptual art.

The Death of Books touches on the topic of the desensitization of violence in our culture, particularly of our children. It also skims the surface of the sociology and psychology of the community and how our families are affected by it. It reaches into our pasts, and makes us question our futures.

See The Death of Books at That Place on Grand, 118 N. Grand, Chariton, IA.

Aftermath - The DSM Arts Festival

Here are a few photos from the Des Moines Arts Festival. I had so much fun ... and so many questions to answer about this body of work.

Most people were really attracted to the bright colors and unusual arrangement. I was really lucky to be in an end spot, which allowed me a little bit of bonus space outside my 10'x10' allotment, but more importantly, it put me in a premium spot as the first booth on the right as patrons walked through a main entry to the festival streets.

I had some brown craft bags printed with the name of this project (you can see one in this picture), and I was happy to sell a few bags as people entered just as impulse items. Probably the cheapest thing to buy at the festival!

It was clear that many people just enjoyed seeing books - most of them old books, a few of them new books. It was a stretch for some people to accept and appreciate books as part of a body of conceptual art. Some were just simply horrified that I had violated perfectly good books with bullet holes.

In addition to books that have been shot, I also included a few Golden Books that are caught in old, rusty hunting traps - you can see Chicken Little in the foreground with the bright yellow cover. That book was actually a 1930s copy that was already falling apart, so I didn't feel too bad about letting it get caught in the jaws of a rusty trap, but still, it was really just as difficult to execute those pieces as the ones that I shot - pun fully intended.

A big conversation starter was another piece in the foreground - do you see the one with the black gas pipe drilled through a pile of askew books? That is my Book Club. Intended for home security - use it for self defense. I carried it around like a bat on my shoulder, but it is very heavy (about 15 pounds), so even though I play softball, I didn't swing it very often. Besides, there were too many people around to do that without causing fright. It worked just as well as a walking stick, and I encouraged people to hold it and think about the metaphor. Lots of laughs and interaction with that one. I would love to make a custom cabinet for it - like the wooden cabinets that used to be used for a fireman's axe. Now, we usually see a fire extinguisher in a metal box with a glass front. That display would be another homage to Ray Bradbury.

This piece is titled "Rorschach Test", and features two dictionary 
pages from the first section of a 1959 Webster's in the area that has the "new" words in it. Rorscach Test was one of the new words,along with others like "schizophrenia", "seabees", and an  entire collection of other post WWII era military terms.

I have used a bird's skull in the center as well as beaver jawbones in the four corners. The lead buttons are those that used to be used to match house window sashes with screens and storms - in the day when they were framed with wood. In the fall you removed the wood framed screens from your windows and replaced them with wood framed storm glass to keep the winter chill outside.

The antique glasses are yellow to match the yellow in the beaver teeth. I thought of using rose-colored glasses for the metaphor, but then it would not match the teeth, and I really wanted to keep the sepia-tone palette going throughout the whole piece. Non-glare plexiglas is used to complete the look of an archeological museum display in a cabinet, with the entire blue-framed piece appearing to float between the layers.

I was not able to get a really good shot of the actual shelving unit inside the booth - it was always surrounded with people in a very small space. However, I did take the above photo in our back yard that really highlights my husband's talents. We had several lengthy discussions about possible displays, and if time were no factor, we would have created an entire tree with books growing out of the branches.

What we made allowed us to include the use of doors as shelves, which helped tie together the whole analogy of "books as doorways" with the doorknobs on the books themselves. It was tricky for him to cut the individual logs so that the doors would sit relatively level on them, but he is a skilled perfectionist. I was fortunate to have the Queen Anne's Lace in bloom - I love this picture of the trees in the meadow.

Even the knob used to hold a bag was an antique cabinet knob.

It seemed throughout the festival that people who talked to me were genuinely interested in hearing about the idea behind The Death of Books. Most of these people were baby boomers, like myself. Lots of teachers - lots of librarians - lots of students.

One of my favorite parts of the booth was the yellow papered wall in the back with the giant red letters that spelled out "READ". I actually bought these letters from the North Side Library when they remodeled and upgraded their signage. It was my intent to have a house big enough to have a large library so I could install the LIBRARY letters on my wall. Didn't happen. I mean, it hasn't happened ... yet! I have downsized my thinking a little bit and now plan on using the word READ instead. Still don't have the house that it will fit, but I do have the letters.

So I covered the back wall with yellow paper and hung Sharpies from string in various spots with the hope that people would write their own comments. I wrote something on the paper as starter, but it took no time at all for the idea to bloom. I am going to just share some of those photos and let you enjoy them...

 

 

I have no idea what the foreign language comments are, but I choose to believe that they are positive notes from a fellow book lover. I originally just had paper installed above the silver bar (see photo below), but it was filling up fast and few could reach the area above the red letters, so on the second day I added more strips of yellow paper below the silver bar. After the shelves were taken apart and removed from the booth, I snapped this shot of my ten foot wide back wall. Now, I am thinking when I have a big enough house to have a large library, I will install these red letters on my wall, but I think I will include the yellow paper behind them. The messages are so personal and so profound, they give me a lump in my throat when I read them.