Books Are Collections of Ideas



Years ago, when I moved into what hopefully will be our last home, we were lucky enough to have hired a moving company to help us with the really heavy stuff. Mohammed was the leader of the tiny crew working with us that seering July afternoon. After struggling with a Steinway Vertigrand piano, pipe leg tables with hickory tops, washers, refrigerators...the stuff that kills when it falls, the crew uncovered a cube of tightly packed cardboard boxes, stuffed cleverly in the back of the truck. As Mohammed hoisted the first box from the floor to his shoulder, he winced crouching into a clean and jerk position, slowly rising, back straight air puffing his cheeks. Now this was a big man, his arms were thick as my leg and his fist solid as a rock. He grimaced, "What in God's name do you have in here ?", the sweat atomized across his words condensing his mighty breath. "Just books," I yelled from across the yard.

As Mohammed descended across the swayed aluminum plank from the lift of the truck to the lawn, he stopped before me and said, "Books are powerful things," his eyes full of an understanding much deeper than mine.

The form of a book is mostly physical, it usually represents an expression of language contained in a sequential format. Language, though, can be an abstract of many things not necessarily attached to written words. This language can be formed within a visual, spatial or sonic expression and never reveal itself as such. One could argue that all works of art, all creations– are forms of the book, because the space the book form takes encompasses the progression or regression of time. Mostly, what holds the concept of the artists book together is the physical form of the book–the book as object, used as the idea or the engine of the art.

The work assembled in "Collections Contained" was procured under the auspices that the work address the issues of idea before form. And, that the form becomes physically present because of the gravity of the idea it contains. Books are collections of ideas.

Twelve artists from the Baltimore and Philadelphia corridor, extending to West Virginia have been collected in this exhibition. In some ways, the installation of books on pedestals is a glossary of one extended and larger journal of ideas assembled on the human experience. Each book is an index of the next–together they form a greater library, a library without shelves, numerical codes and pages, but rather of inspirations, illuminations, whimsy and regret.

Please return to this space next week for a critical review of the show.

--Kenneth Jones


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Collections Contained is a books arts show curated by Professor Jim McFarland,Printmaker Karen Kohles and Professor Kenneth Jones of the
Visual, Performing & Applied Arts Division at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland.

Posted: Thu - September 23, 2004 at 02:13 PM        

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