Community Art Project #2: Out Of Context / The Pulse of The Page

I was invited to create a piece for the Goodnow Library's sesquicentennial anniversary 

---that's 350 years of loaning books to the townsfolk.  The idea of making this a community project was mine.  

It was interesting to watch as kids and adults thumbed through various used books --- poetry, dictionaries, picture books, textbooks, manuals, novels.  All participants were amused, some were even giddy. Their cropped text selections ran from serious to silly. Participants were also given the option to underline, highlight or black-out words. Except for an adolescent's scrawled signature, there was no editing of the anonymous out-takes.

Shims held the words and spines.

I constructed the 2'x4'x1"substrate.

                             

Fitting all the pieces together was tricky in part due to varying book spine widths.

     

                                    Out of Context

The Pulse of The Page

The words we read pulse through us.

These words seep in,

promote laughter, tears, change 

… as does the red, pulsing within us

---providing life.

Cathleen E. Bradley

*I have a memorable relationship with libraries. Aside from borrowing stacks of books since I was a pipsqueak, I can claim TWICE being locked in --- once on the west coast as a teen and then again, on the east coast, decades later. Both incidences were accidental. 
Two points for not letting dim lighting interrupt my ability to focus!