September 21, 2011 – The Book

The book might not be feeling so great these days. If you can get people to read, you have to look hard for a bookstore. And then there is the competition from the latest gadgets, including the gadgets that promise you the experience of reading a book electronically.

Part of the experience of reading the book is finding the book to read. You might be given the book, or borrowed the book from someone who has thought you would appreciate it. There is the fun of browsing bookstores and libraries seeing what you can find. Sometimes you are out of something to read. There are those times when you end up picking out a book that happened to be handy. More than once I have even bought books in airport bookstores that I never would have read if I wasn’t in a pinch. Some of those are books I have really enjoyed.

And there is the experience of the object. Cracking the book open for the first time, holding the book. Looking at the book sideways and seeing your progress marked by the bookmark sticking out between the pages. Then there is the surprise of finding some scrap left behind in an old book. I even did an entire art piece about that last December.

With all that in mind, today’s piece for the 2011 Project is about the book. One of the themes resonating through the project is time. There are pieces about past, present and future. This piece in particular may end up being even more a time capsule. As books in a non-electronic form start to vanish, I have used elements of discarded and damaged books for this piece to preserve them for the future. And this piece also is another work of tactile art. In the future, touching the piece will be part of a past experience of handling the book as object.

January 1, 2011 - The Golden Year

Here it is, the first one. Even though I do not intend to install the finished pieces in any particular order, the first one seems weighted. It needs to be extra special, making coming up with an idea for this one even more challenging.

New Year’s Eve and the entire New Year’s weekend were gloomy, cold and gray in San Francisco. At 4:45 pm on New Year’s Eve I was working at my desk. I suddenly noticed the change of color in the light well in front of me. The light was a golden glow. I looked towards the front of the apartment and could see the entire street was glowing. I looked out in the direction of Ocean Beach and saw the entire City bathed in a golden light. This lasted all of ten minutes.

In years past have spent the sunset on New Year’s Eve at Ocean Beach. There a small group of locals participate in the Afro-Brazilian ritual for the Goddess Yemanja. The ten minutes of light made me long to be out at the beach. Even though I didn’t make it out there, the entire City and the coming year now feel blessed.

So, the color for 2011 is gold. It shall be a Golden Year. As I worked on the first piece on New Year’s Day I wanted to include a reflection of time. The image is of an old, gold watch given to me by my Uncle Walter. He would be 100 if he were still with us. I had gone over halfway through the first day of the year without listening to Yma Sumac. Her five octave voice filled the room as I added pieces of a map of Peru to finish the piece.