Speechless

2008-2009

(A permanent site-specific sculpture for the Lafayette Library, Lafayette, California)

A giant wavering bronze stack of paper rises. Had one taken a page from every book in the library collection, stacking one on top of the other, a stack of paper equivalent in height to this sculpture would result. The towering sculpture bends and teeters reaching precarious proportions. Wind has caught the top pages blowing them across the outdoor plaza, up and through the stairway corridor. Some pages furl in mid air, flying above the walkways while others wrap around trellis posts, past the library walls. Each fluttering page is etched with layers of text and graphics relating to all pages ever printed. Pages are etched with imagery scanned directly from books from all sections of a library’s collection. The information is freed from its traditional limits on a specific page to rise through the stack and out onto the individual sheets, just as water moves through a channel mixing churning, pouring and dispersing. The pages waft through the walkways. The metamorphosis of how we learn is captured by the dynamic, dreamlike flight of the bronze pages soaring gracefully through the air.