On Books Of Crazy

Meanwhile, during the Bullwinkle backgrounds and the mattresses and many other flights of fancy, these books began to take hold.

I had interned at a high school with a teacher who introduced me to the work of Peter Beard.  He used these diary pages and photographs that he had taken to document his life and his travels and his feelings about what he was seeing in Africa. I used my books as diary/sketchbooks/catch alls for my obsessions.

I liked the idea of recycling old books, because the “fear of the white page” is gone when you start in.  I liked also the text that was inherent in the books, for it sometimes fueled my musings.  I collected a few old books and started using the pages for my own depository of thought.  Being an avid packrat, I was delighted to find a vehicle for using all the stuff I gather and don’t know what to do with.  I also really enjoyed the idea that I could do anything in the books, unlike in other work.  It seemed like they were just my private dresser drawer into which anything could land without second thought.  I loved having a sketchbook really work for me!  I could collect ideas and use them later in other venues.  That had never happened to me before. 

I was attracted to the fact that I fed the book.  I would obsessively seek out artifacts and words and drawings to add to the books.  It wasn’t only that the books held things for me; it was also the idea that I needed to get more and more and more for the books to take shape.  I loved the three-dimensional quality they took on when the pages hardened and thickened with the gluing and pasting of layers.

Most of all, I liked the idea that public and private lines were blurred.  This was a dialogue that had come up in my work in the past and I enjoyed airing out my laundry for all to see… if they looked for it.  There was something kind of wreckless about making something for myself and then as if by accident… putting it into a gallery and leaving it there for others to paw through.  It reminded me of some of the text artists that I had admired in art school… Sean Landers… and how certain people would read and others would walk on by.  The meaning of the “books” happened differently for a diverse audience.  Some saw them as sculpture.  Others read a couple of pages, but mostly ignored the ramblings as if it were an invasion of privacy.  Then there were the voyeurs who quoted excerpts back to me a week later. 

So, what do they mean to me?  Do these function as another segment of my work or are they just excuses for my “packrat” obsessive behavior?  Are these “cartoons” or “sketches” or do they possess their own weight in the grand scheme of my working life?