There's treasure in there
July 26, 2013 6:12 AM   Subscribe

Books with borax crystals growing on them. Artist Alexis Arnold grows crystals on the pages of books.
posted by gauche (24 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is like what you find lurking behind your fridge when you finally decide to give your apartment a deep clean and realize that the last time a tenant bothered to clean back there was sometime in the late seventies.
posted by phunniemee at 6:21 AM on July 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


Argh, I wanted them to be beautiful but instead they just made me very very itchy.
posted by DingoMutt at 6:23 AM on July 26, 2013 [7 favorites]


Are the delicate or hard crystals? I think they look pretty but all I can picture is vacuuming up crystal dust.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:28 AM on July 26, 2013


I have dropped way too many preciouses into the bath/sink/toilet/lake/ocean to have this make me feel anything other than full of regret.
posted by skrozidile at 6:34 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


some of the books look like magazines, and unsure if pulp paper like phone books is the same.. Seems the crystal growth does depend on the type of book used. I wonder if some of the warping is done on purpose instead of as a result of drying/crystal growth.
posted by k5.user at 6:38 AM on July 26, 2013


I think they look pretty but all I can picture is vacuuming up crystal dust.

Not even once.
posted by A god with hooves, a god with horns at 6:38 AM on July 26, 2013 [4 favorites]


People always assume that good books are wasted on projects like this. That's almost always false. There are a ton of waste books; we're not in an age of rare books. Obsolete encyclopedias, old dictionaries, old fragile copies of "classics" that are reprinted by the millions each year. All the better to be repurposed in art than tossed in the recycling bin.

No one's growing Borax crystals or making sculptural furniture out of Gutenberg Bibles. Let's not mourn the loss of books that were already on their way to the trash heap.
posted by explosion at 6:39 AM on July 26, 2013 [6 favorites]


Hmm. This is nice but not as beautiful as I'd hoped it would be. The beauty of the description exceeds that of the actual project?
posted by vacapinta at 6:42 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Some of them are really beautiful, like recrystallized fossils, and some of them make me think of cleaning out my basement after it flooded.
posted by Akhu at 6:45 AM on July 26, 2013


It's not that the books are so precious, but the crystals look like mold.
posted by jb at 6:46 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


These sculptures reflect the artist’s opinion that books are becoming more obsolete, and will eventually become nothing more but beautiful objects that adorn rooms.

I wonder what he would think if I walked into his gallery, bought one of these, busted all the crystals off of it & sat down to read?

Would he consider it performance art?
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:58 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


Unexpectedly grubby and mouldy - I was picturing something much more glistening and sci-fi!

I wonder if some of the warping is done on purpose instead of as a result of drying/crystal growth.

Some of them have definitely been shaped before the crystal growing stage of the process - e.g. Snow. (I think I prefer the ones that look relatively untampered with.)
posted by jack_mo at 7:08 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


Arnold’s art objects tell us that we have to treasure the kind of knowledge that can be found in books.

Actually, and especially given the sentence just prior to this explaining that the artist feels books are obsolete, I am pretty sure the intent was NOT to get us to treasure the books.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:23 AM on July 26, 2013


People always assume that good books are wasted on projects like this. That's almost always false. There are a ton of waste books; we're not in an age of rare books. Obsolete encyclopedias, old dictionaries, old fragile copies of "classics" that are reprinted by the millions each year.
I'm reminded of a scene in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow":

The world has entered a new ice age, essentially overnight and with extreme consequences. A few survivors have found shelter in a library. They're very cold. They need to start a fire. Two of the characters collecting books to burn notice what the other has collected, and start arguing. I forget the authors involved, but maybe one is saying "I can't believe you'd burn Sartre! If anybody survives this, we need to preserve his writings for the good of humanity!" The other responds with something like "Oh please, he's trite and overrated! And you're going to burn Nietzche?!"

A third survivor pokes his head out from behind some stacks and calmly says, "Guys, there's a whole section of tax law books over here."
posted by Flunkie at 7:31 AM on July 26, 2013 [7 favorites]


There is something about looking at these which can bring on a sense of regret. Like, mouldering books just seem to signify that something has happened to the original owner. Whether it's a flood loss, fire, or zombie apocalypse. It's similar to the disembodied doll head, staring lifelessly from the mud. Or the lone shoe on the side of the road.

So, yeah, they make me feel a little itchy, too.
posted by amanda at 7:44 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Really? The Yellow Pages? I'm going to decorate my house with the Yellow Pages? (Really cool project though)
posted by Mooseli at 8:00 AM on July 26, 2013


re Day After Tomorrow: my mother always wondered why they didn't burn all the wood shelving, etc. You'd think it would make better fuel than books.
posted by jb at 8:05 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Books can be beautiful things. This fails to capture that. Its books look sad and wrecked.
posted by graymouser at 8:28 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think we can all agree that it was a nice idea, but the execution was not the best.
posted by misha at 8:47 AM on July 26, 2013


Previously on Metafilter: Jardin de la Connaissance - The garden of decaying books

I liked this work so much I want to build my own. I have rooms full of raw material.

I do respect the idea of books, but many individual instances fall far short of the ideal.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:06 AM on July 26, 2013


These sculptures reflect the artist’s opinion that books are becoming more obsolete, and will eventually become nothing more but beautiful objects that adorn rooms.

Ugh. Oh, is this an old article from the 60’s?
posted by bongo_x at 9:27 AM on July 26, 2013


I'm reminded of a scene in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"

Tangent time! It's otherwise a pretty forgettable movie apart from all the weather porn, but there's one little exchange in it that I've always liked. It's from either that same library scene or a similar one a little later. One of the other survivors is clutching a book to keep it from being burned--it's a Gutenberg Bible he got from the rare books room:
Elsa: You think God's gonna save you?

Jeremy: No. I don't believe in God.

Elsa: You're holding onto that Bible pretty tight.

Jeremy: I'm protecting it. This Bible is the first book ever printed. It represents the dawn of the Age of Reason. As far as I'm concerned, the written word is mankind's greatest achievement. You can laugh...but if Western civilization is finished, I'm going to save at least one little piece of it.
I always wondered if he got to keep it.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:31 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's otherwise a pretty forgettable movie

Excuse me, but there are wolves. On a boat. Which is in the middle of the street.
posted by phunniemee at 11:59 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


some of the books look like magazines, and unsure if pulp paper like phone books is the same.. Seems the crystal growth does depend on the type of book used. I wonder if some of the warping is done on purpose instead of as a result of drying/crystal growth.

There's a magazine and also a phone book in there. Some of them do look "posed" (the one titled "Snow" in the gallery on the artist's page is very pretty/sculptural-looking, and I very much doubt that happened spontaneously. I'm with skrozdile; I don't have a problem with using books in art or anything (and I think this is a neat way to do it), but the warped look makes me reflexively wince.

Excuse me, but there are wolves. On a boat. Which is in the middle of the street.

What I remember most about that movie is the scene where they outrun frost, because this is a movie where "cold" is a thing that moves around linearly at roughly human speed and also can be stopped by doors. It is a very stupid movie, but in a kind of awesome way.
posted by kagredon at 10:31 PM on July 27, 2013


« Older "We are British. We are Liverpudlians. "   |   They are called RANDOM patrols for a reason! Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments