MARGINALIA
Marginalia is an interactive library of used books found in secondhand bookstores that have all been marked or written in by their previous owners. Visitors are invited to open and examine the books and explore their markings. The installation also includes a collection of items left in the books by previous owners, displayed in a vitrine, as well as original artworks that I created from the marks in the books. Marginalia was recently on display at MASS MoCA as part of the exhibition Bibliothecaphilia and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and numerous regional newspapers.
WORKS ON PAPER
The following pieces were inspired by the used books in my collection. Many of these books had been heavily marked with neon highlighters, in some cases all of the words on the page were covered. The three highlighter prints in the exhibition are reproduced with the text digitally removed leaving only the strokes of the highlighter. The purple highlighter is A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (pg 57), the blue highlighter is The Disuniting Of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (pg 137), and the pink highlighter is Froissart Chronicles (pg 439). The Star Chart is a digital composite featuring hundreds of hand-drawn stars scanned from the margins of the used books.
SAMPLES OF MARGINALIA
The following pages are from some of the books in my collection. Every book in the library contains the markings of its previous owner, from drawings to notes, recipes to personal reflections, passages marked with highlighters to mathematical equations and notated sheet music.
The exhibition at MASS MoCA included a large vitrine containing ephemera that I found in the pages of the books: old photographs, drawings, love letters, pressed flowers, scratch tickets, fetal sonograms, and a note contemplating suicide, among others.
SAMPLES OF EPHEMERA FOUND
INSIDE THE BOOKS