Melissa Huggins, PLU Artist Examines Cultural Impact of Destroyed Libraries,
The Mast, LXXXIII (2), Sept. 16, 2005, 10. .

As you walk into Mortvedt Library, perhaps preparing for a long night of paper-writing, you walk past two glass cases near the entrance. You might glance at the sculptures inside, and observe plants looking as if they’re growing through a book. Fascinating pieces, you think to yourself as you gravitate toward the espresso stand. As you approach the cases, however, you realize the space that used to hold nothing but a few tables has been transformed into a work of art.

Two ancient-looking columns frame the exhibit, the top and base of each covered with pages and pages of books. In the center, a fallen column attracts the eye, broken into three pieces and surrounded by scattered books. Overhead, paper cutouts of columns and a few scattered pages seem to be floating. The exhibit is called “Lost Libraries, Lost Memory” and the artist is none other than PLU librarian Holly Senn.

Senn has been a librarian at PLU for the last three years and an artist for 15 years. She was asked to bring in some of her work to be put on display in the library, and was offered the space in front of the espresso stand to do as she wished. Considering the environment of space, Senn said she felt it would be appropriate to make libraries the subject of the work.

Her first challenge was deciding how to deal with the column at the entry point of the space. As you walk toward the site, there is a column that Senn worried could interfere with people’s view of the work. As she thought about how to deal with the column, she realized the columns themselves were significant. She decided that instead of trying to work around the column, she could utilize it and incorporate them all into the piece.

“You often see them outside of libraries, when you think of very traditional libraries like the New York public library,” Senn said. “The more I thought about it, the more columns to me were a metaphor for libraries, for history and institutions, so I thought, I’m going to run with it.”

Thinking about how columns related to libraries, she remembered a book that had recently been ordered entitled “Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century.” She began to read about and research all the libraries worldwide that had been ruined, either by accident or purposefully, and wanted to convey what a profound loss is suffered when a library is destroyed.

“I wanted to convey the idea of destruction, so I have two columns that are whole and I knew I had to have one that was in ruins, to resonate that idea of destruction,” Senn said.

While Senn considered sculptures her preferred form of art, she enjoyed branching out with this project. The genre is called site-specific installation art, and the idea is to harmonize the piece with the context of the site. Rather than a museum piece, which asks the viewer to stay distant and simply observe, this piece is designed so people can interact with it.

“An environment has been created in this location,” Senn said. “It is attached to this specific site, and it asks the viewer to investigate the site, walk around and discover things, think about things.”
After she came up with the idea for the site, the actual creation was a monumental project. Eight hours of research and 155 hours of physically making the pieces, as well as the pages from 18 books, three gallons of white school glue, 500 toothpicks and sheets and sheets of Styrofoam, went into making the project during the course of three months.

Once all the individual pieces were finished, putting it all together on the site took 13 hours for Senn and an assistant. Amazingly, that was the first time she herself saw the completed work.
“I never saw the whole piece together until the day I put it up,” Senn said. “With site-specific art, you don’t have that chance to preview it. Once it’s created and it goes up, then it’s a work of art.”

The hardest part, Senn says, was making the capital—the top of the two complete columns. She had 4 by 8 sheets of Styrofoam which she scored, making them bendable so she could form the rounded edges, and then she inserted toothpicks along every inch to ensure they would fit tightly into a spiral. She cut a design into each capital, so when she glued the pages on, she wanted to fold them into those cuts to maintain a three dimensional feel. This proved to be more time consuming than she had imagined, but the careful placement of each page adds to the architectural image she has created. Tiny details like placing the pages purposefully alongside the spirals, choosing pages of different shades and never placing two pages from the same book right next to each other display the amount of thought that went into the piece.

A total of 123 destroyed libraries are represented in the columns floating above. Each lists the name, city and date of the destruction as well as the reason: war, flood, riot, fire, tsunami, and others. They are intended not as a comprehensive list, but to be representative of the many libraries destroyed. Senn said she hopes the piece will promote thought on the subject, especially considering the recent loss of libraries in New Orleans.

“I’m hoping that this work gets people thinking about the fact that even though you hear about libraries being destroyed in the ancient sense, it is something that is going on all the time,” Senn explained. “Sometimes it’s forces of nature, sometimes it’s by accidents in wars and riots, but sometimes it is very purposeful, and each time that happens, a bit of a culture disappears.”

The title of the work arises from the sense of what we lose each time a library is destroyed. It is not just books that can be found elsewhere—often there are irreplaceable cultural artifacts which are lost. Senn calls the loss of such material a “deep cultural cut.”

“Every time a library is lost, we lose a sense of a memory of the past,” she said. “That’s why it is called, ‘Lost Libraries, Lost Memory.’”

Senn looks forward to seeing students explore the piece.

“People are really meant to come through and look down at the books and pages, and look up at the columns,” she said. “It’s not something you have to stand back and observe, it is meant for people to come and investigate.”

To explore more of Holly Senn’s art, you can visit her website at http://www.ryksenn.com