A VERY SMALL LIBRARY OF VERY CONDENSED BOOKS

I created this piece in response to a collection of damaged reference books I found on the property of an old homestead house in rural Alaska, where I was an artist-in-residence in summer 2011. I took the damaged pages and put them into small glass specimen bottles to preserve them, then created a clamshell box to hold the bottles. Each bottle is labeled with the name of the book it contains. The books are more “condensed” as a result of my actions than they were before, but perhaps the library of this long lost Alaskan homesteader is also less likely to be forgotten.