Final Project: Sorted Books
For my #ArtAssignment I decided to go with Sorted Books by Nina Katchadourian. In this assignment the artist is asked to choose a person you know or would like to know better, take a look through their library, and make 3 stacks of books to develop a portrait of the person. This assignment immediately resonated with me because I was raised to believe that the literature you love is a defining part of your character. My Mom, who was raised by an English professor and became an English teacher herself, has always found her passion in books. She told us the Oscar Wilde quote: “You are what you read.” This meant that growing up the idea of boredom and not knowing what to do did not exist, because there was always a good book we hadn’t read. So, for this assignment I decided to take a look through the many books in the house I grew up in, and create Book Portraits for my family members. When Katchadourian created this project, she seemed to be more focused on the poem created by the titles of the books stacked on top of each other. I struggled to create poems from the various jumbles of titles, so I ask that you focus more of the themes of the titles all together and create a story from that. I won’t go into too much detail of why I chose the specific titles because for the most part each title has its own personal meaning to each member of my family. For example, with my Mom I chose books like Into the Wild, As You Like It, and The Best Short Stories of the Modern Age because they are some of her all-time favorites that she taught to her students. But other titles such as All My Sons, The New York Trilogy, and The History of Love I chose because I believe these titles relate to who my Mom is as a person. In any case, what I enjoyed most about creating these portraits was that I believe multiple themes can be found within each title. I will say that for my portrait I chose some of my favorite books that all have to do with the theme of spirituality, dreams, and night which are all being held up by a Lonely Planet. (Also peep the ones of my dog Cleo because I found those 3 books and couldn’t resist)
