More than 900 works on paper so far, including drawings, collages, readymades, photographs and etchings.
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In this durational series, I document sustained physical engagement with over 900 books (so far) in my collection. Each work registers contact and attention. Taken together, Book Card is a system and a performance: a structured but open-ended act of handling, reflection and recording. There is meaning in its serial nature, the quiet repetition of gesture in the accumulating works.
I handle each book long enough to trigger memory or imagination, then translate that encounter into a work and post it. This may take a few minutes or it may take months.
The books themselves are important; many were inherited. Layering private experience (like grief) onto these objects, I create a material record of memories as it passes through objects.
The posting of works on Instagram (@bookcard) has always been part of the series.Â
Book Card is shaped by conceptual rules:
1. I must have read at least part of the book or otherwise used it (as with dictionaries); handling is not enough.
2. Each work must relate to that book (though that need not be apparent to the viewer).
3. Each work must synthesize something happening in the studio at the time of its making.
4. I must alternate posting language-centered works and image-centered ones (though this distinction may not be apparent to the viewer).
5. I may not post more than one work in 24 hours.Â
6. Each work is an initiation for that book. After a book is "book-carded," it is in my collection. (If I read a book but do not intend to keep it, it may not be book-carded.)
1. I must have read at least part of the book or otherwise used it (as with dictionaries); handling is not enough.
2. Each work must relate to that book (though that need not be apparent to the viewer).
3. Each work must synthesize something happening in the studio at the time of its making.
4. I must alternate posting language-centered works and image-centered ones (though this distinction may not be apparent to the viewer).
5. I may not post more than one work in 24 hours.Â
6. Each work is an initiation for that book. After a book is "book-carded," it is in my collection. (If I read a book but do not intend to keep it, it may not be book-carded.)
A more autobiographical statement follows.Â
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In 2011, I found a library's "book card" in a book that used to be my father's, inherited when my parents died. It gave me a glimpse into his life. My father must have walked up to Columbia, taken out the book – and kept it. After I read the book I considered the card. They were both souvenirs: physical objects that commemorate an aspect of my father's life.
Each of my books holds that secret, I realized, including ones I bought myself and kept, then carried with me from apartment to apartment. Where and when did my mother, my father or I hold or carry a particular book around? I wanted to investigate that.
After the work is created, there's the act of posting: each book moves out of their/our past and into my public-facing present. And with that, a divide that existed in life is removed: my parents’ book-stories are woven in with mine.Â