These works are greatly influenced by two residencies I did in the 1990s: Mid-Atlantic Visual Arts at the Washington Project for the Arts and a semester's appointment at the University of Southern Maine as artist in residence. My proposal for WPA was to create an installation using indigenous book discards from the DC area. I soon accumulated a studio's worth of old law books. My plan for USM was more open, though I knew I wanted to work with the 1960 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana that I had used in grade school. I became interested in the history of encyclopedias and dictionaries, which led me back to collections and cabinets of curiosity. SmartBooks reflect this history, and the shift of information from analogue to digital systems of searching and delivery.
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