Library Visitors Learn The Power Of The Pencil
By janet smith and gudrun will
Publish Date: 12-Feb-2004
Pencil in a trip to the
Vancouver Public Library central branch to check out the facility's first-ever
art installation among its books. Femke van Delft raises thousands of
the writing instruments to fine art in her new piece, Viewpoint Ahead:
the library, which debuts tonight (February 12). Having discovered a way
to sharpen pencils down so their spiralling shavings stay intact and attached,
she's crafted a six-metre-long bookcase, based on the exact dimensions
of the library's shelves, out of the altered writing tools; nearby sits
a life-size chair and a block of concrete with more pencils poking out.
Invisible to the visitor's eye is all the research that went into the
project, which van Delft has funded herself and which sits in the facility's
sixth-floor fine-arts-and-music department. Van Delft told the Straight
she chose one shelf in the library and counted all the books that sat
on it; that's the exact number of shaved pencils--539--that she used to
build her bookcase. She also got help from a librarian to study the amount
of books the average avid reader will go through in their lifetime; that
figure--about 3,000--represents the total number of pencils she used in
the work.
The piece is meant to illustrate everything from the torturous process
of capturing ideas on paper to society's obsessive need to catalogue information.
Van Delft, who has been building her piece on-site, said: "One writer
who came in said, 'This is writers' block and how hard it is to translate
experiences onto paper.'...It's been amazing to create this piece around
people who really search for meaning. People come to a library searching
for meaning."
Van Delft launches Viewpoint Ahead tonight from 7 to 9 p.m.; at 7:30 she'll
give an artist's talk. The installation is on view until February 29.
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