BOOKWALL NOIR

7 x 3.75 x .25 inches photocopy flip book, 26 pages, perfect binding, 2022. $10

The Bookwall camera records the wind, bears, crows, deer, bobcats, coyotes, fox, skunks, turkeys and humans as they pass the boundary of my property.

During a midnight walk, three young men pass the camera at 11:58 PM and return at 12:09 AM receiving a text message that causes them to sit down. From 12:12 AM to 12:16 the camera does not record any movement. Then they leave.

The Bookwall was created from library discards, castaways of knowledge, made redundant in the digital age. The foundation is forty years of Massachusetts legislative history. Starting in 1997, I carried books on my back a quarter mile to the corner of my property defined by my neighbor’s stone walls. Those stones were collected 200 years ago as farmland trash.  They were used to define pastures and to keep the cows from wandering.