Where the Things Go
 Where the Things Go (Bookworm Library); 2019, decomposed books, wood, organic material
Where the Things Go explores the ephemerality of culture versus the cycles in nature, it utilizes entropy as a transformative force while aiming at recycling both books and cultural narratives. Where the Things Go (Bookworm Library) is an installation functioning as an outdoor book composter consisting of bookcases like structures placed in the forest and filled with books, that deteriorate and compost over time.
“The Library a wilderness of books…when I looked into Purchas’s Pilgrims, it affected me like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarch of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat. Those old books suggested a certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literature to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bullfrogs and the hum of mosquitos reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I had closed the book. Decayed literature makes the riches of all soils.”
Henry David Thoreau, The Journal 1837-1861, March 16, pg 118
Â
Where the Things Go (Bookworm Library); 2019, pencil on paper, 14†x 11â€
 
 Where Things Go (Rock Hill Library of Overdue Books), In collaboration with Brian Carey and Valerie Tomaselli, 2020, installation view Unison Art Center, New Paltz, decomposed books, W18 1/2†x H18 1/2†x D 6 ½â€
Where Things Go (Rock Hill Library of Overdue Books) is based on the fascinating open-air library project, of Brian Carey and Valerie Tomaselli, who are composting books in the forest of the Shawangunk Mountains.
