CultureNOW - Wondrous: Joe O'Connell and Tucson and Pima County Public Art Collection

Wondrous

Artist
Joe O'Connell

Collection
Tucson and Pima County Public Art Collection

Dates

Installed, 2008

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Description

The Artists

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This artpiece consists of a long folded panel of galvanized steel and an intense light source that is active at night. The panel includes roughly 1000 words jammed together in a way that encourages your eye to wander through it, creating new meaning from existing sources.

" We chose phrases from a wide range of literature plus oral histories of the settlement of the Marana area. The words are roughly 74% English, 24% Spanish and 2% O'odham. While it was tempting to choose phrases that we like or to make up words, we thought it would be more interesting to choose sources based upon what works have been most printed and distributed historically, as measured by book sales, number of languages the book is translated into, etc. and loosely reflecting what makes up a modern American library collection. This means that Shakespeare is right in there with Danielle Steele, Cervantes, Dr. Spock, Lorca, EB White, Orwell and others are all included. Phrases from several Harry Potter books appear as do phrases from Harriet Beecher Stowe's hugely influential Uncle Tom's Cabin. While we found some wonderful histories from when the area around the library was settled by whites, we chose primarily words and phrases from the larger western culture. Our feeling is that the library is the one place that is our link beyond our local conditions. It is our primary source of connection to the rest of our civilization - a civilization that spans continents and centuries and has chosen the written word as one of its primary means of continuity.

We originally chose approximately 3000 words from these sources. We randomly each phrase to one of three fonts and one of five sizes. Then we arranged the words in a mostly random fashion, keeping what fit physically and leaving out what did not. We paid attention to the relative concentration of various parts of speech: articles, nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions are distributed throughout so that it is possible for your eye to wander through the sculpture creating new meanings. And you eye will wander. Our visual and cognitive equipment desperately searches for order and will tolerate much visual ambiguity and fill in many blanks.

A seething field of words could describe my mind as I grew up, going to the library as a child and bringing back a stack of books as big as I could carry every week. I read from all sources and often had many books open at the same time. This continued through my university years. As a more fully educated adult, I realize that this seething field of words is the primary matter out of which I now create meaning for myself and it is what I must attach new meanings to if they are going to stick in my mind. I suspect many children today are similar. Computers and text messaging have made reading and writing as important as ever if not more so.

During the night, three of the world's most powerful LED's project intense colors through the words, casting overlapping shadows in six colors on the landscape around the sculpture and on visitors to the library. While there are many ways to understand this phenomena, some purely aesthetic, one interpretation is that we are inevitably imprinted by the words and phrases of the written culture that has come before us. These words inscribe themselves upon us even before we are aware of what is happening. Yet they strike each person differently and are always subject to rearrangement. Making our own sense of what came before us and leaving some of that behind is one of our primary jobs and sources of pleasure as human beings. The library is a great place where that happens."

The Artists

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Location

Outside the Public Library
7800 N. Schisler Dr.
Tucson, AZ 85743
United States

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