Alec Clayton, "Senn of Art," Weekly Volcano, May 25, 2006, 2.

Like the opening of a mind through books, Holly Senn’s art continues to grow. Senn is a conceptual artist, but one who understands that conceptual art need not abandon the aesthetic object. Her messages, which invariably deal with books and the trees from which their pages are made, are presented with a clear appreciation of beautiful form.

Senn combines organic forms of the natural world with the structured and intellectual world of books, making sculpture out of discarded books and the limbs of trees. “By combining these worlds I investigate questions about the life cycle of books and ideas and juxtapose the values of preservation and change,” Senn says.

In “Volumes Reconfigured” at Art on Center Gallery, Senn divides the gallery in half. One half of the space is taken up by a site-specific installation, and the other is filled with moderately sized sculptures on pedestals and walls.

The centerpiece of the installation is a wall filled floor to ceiling with an undulating wave of book pages footed by a floor of books. In an alcove at the front of the gallery stands a tree in a bed of books, and from the limbs of the tree hangs a large cocoon made of pages torn from old books. Evenly spaced spindly trees stand against two other walls and the back side of a room divider, and two long strips of cup paper are woven in and out along the length of these trees, indicating perhaps a horizon line or a stream seen through the stand of trees. Although the tree with the cocoon verges on being illustrational and clichéd – sort of like a corny stage set – the overall effect is nice. The wall of waves is a powerful image, and the walls of spindly trees provide a unifying element between the two main parts of the installation. Senn has painted the wall behind the cocoon tree a lovely sparkling blue, and she unifies this half of the gallery with the other half by painting the opposite side of the divider the same blue.

Two mandalic, wall-sized pieces face one another on the other side of the gallery. One is made of a series of pages from illustrated books delicately pinned to the painted blue wall in a circular form, with a lot of open space between the pages. The other one is a color wheel of book covers fanned into a disc with red in the middle and green on the outer edge. Seen alone, this piece would be interesting, but in the context of this show it is overbearing. Since everything else is light and airy with very little color, even the thickness of the densely stacked book covers in this piece is too heavy.

A smaller wall piece that I particularly like is “Leaf Topography,” three evergreen trees made of leaf-shaped cut papers with inked edges and resting on a bed of disc-cut tree sections. Hanging on the wall at eye level for a not-too-tall person, the viewer sees this piece from a bird’s eye-view, looking down on the tops of the conical trees.

A group of sculptures including “Invent,” “Sprout” and “Extract” display a nice sensitivity to form. Little books, each about one cubic inch, are stacked together to form pyramids and spheres that sprout little tree limbs. “Invert” balances a globe on top of a pyramid. “Extract” is pinched in the middle with a length of rope and sprouts a cluster of branches. “Sprout” is a group of three globes with skinny sticks coming out of the top.

One piece that seems out of place is “Recompose,” a tree trunk that sprouts paper mushrooms. It is conceptually inventive but lacks the formal elegance of Senn’s other work.

Visit Alec Clayton’s web site at www.alecclayton.com for essays, reviews, and commentary on art.