Buzz Spector, Nationally Recognized Artist, to Create Installation of Library Books in Vol Walker Hall

Buzz Spector

"Ramp," an installation of found books and mirror, at Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2013. (Courtesy photo)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A nationally recognized artist and critical writer plans to transform hundreds of individual books into a collective topography made just for a specific space – the 23-by-6-foot red oak bench in Vol Walker Hall.

Buzz Spector, a book artist and professor, will visit the Fay Jones School of Architecture from Feb. 24-26 to create a unique installation of books from University Libraries in the building’s main floor corridor.

Spector will be using 2,500 hardback books, pulled from storage and on loan from University Libraries. He will start with 100 boxes full of books and, over three days, will construct a topological installation with the help of Fay Jones School student volunteers. The installation, titled “Benchmark,” will be done on the wooden bench in the center of the corridor.

Spector will give a public artist’s talk at noon Thursday, Feb. 26, at the installation.

“Buzz Spector’s architectonic works employ ‘the book’ as a fundamental constructional element, and immediately provoke thought on the place and meaning of the book in society and culture,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School. “His book installations evoke simultaneous images of buildings, landscapes, cities and rooms – all the design scales of the Fay Jones School. With our adjacency to Mullins Library and our building’s former history as the university library, an installation of such character and potency is highly appropriate. We are pleased to work with Dean Allen and the University Libraries in this endeavor.”

“The University Libraries jumped at the chance to work with the Fay Jones School on this project,” said Carolyn Allen, dean of University Libraries. “We continually look for ways to include art and design in our programming, especially an installation like this one, which provides a unique viewing opportunity for our students and community.”

This project is also interesting to the University Libraries because the idea of “The Library” is inextricably tied to books and their materiality, said Jason W. Dean, assistant librarian and head of the special formats unit. This installation can comment on how the importance of the book as a physical object has changed over time.

“Libraries certainly store and preserve books,” Dean said, “but, if it were not for our other key activities – describing our collections and providing access to them – the library would be a big pile of books, impossible to navigate, like Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Library of Babel.’”

Spector’s artwork has been shown in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, West Virginia; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory and perception.

Spector was a co-founder of WhiteWalls, a magazine of writings by artists, in Chicago in 1978, and served as the periodical’s editor until 1987. Since then, he has written extensively on topics in contemporary art and culture and has contributed reviews and essays to a number of publications, including American Craft, Artforum, Art Issues, Art on Paper, Exposure and New Art Examiner.

His most recent book is Buzzwords, selected interviews with Spector, issued by Sara Ranchouse Publishing in Chicago in 2012. He has also written numerous exhibition catalogue essays, including, most recently, N. Dash (White Flag Projects, 2013) and Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and Last Words (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2011).

Spector is professor of art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He received the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association in 2013.