“Speechless” is a new site specific public art installation by Brian Goggin located in the new Lafayette Library and Learning Center in Lafayette, CA. Brian will be unveiling of the installation this Saturday, November 14th as part of the grand opening of the library.
Festivities begin at 9:30 am – all ages are encouraged to attend. The grand unveiling commences at 10 am after a short parade from the old library to the new, whereupon a show of fantastic wonder will awe the community at large.
More on Brian Goggin’s “Speechless” installation:
Set against the new Lafayette Library a giant wavering bronze stack of paper rises. Had one taken a page from every book in the library collection – stacking one on top of the other – a stack of paper equivalent in height to this sculpture would result. The towering sculpture winds and teeters reaching absurd, precarious proportions. Wind has caught the top pages blowing them across the outdoor plaza, up and through the stairway corridor. Some pages furl in mid air, flying above the walkways while others wrap around trellis posts, past the library walls. Each fluttering page is precisely etched with “drawings” created with layers of text and graphics from the library’s books. The pages glide through the walkways creating a visual flow inspired by the natural air currents streaming through architectural gullies and star and planet constellations.
The bronze pages allude to all pages ever printed. The etched pages use as their pallet imagery scanned directly from books drawing from all sections of the library’s book collection such as philosophy, literature, math, poetry, history, biography, science, and of course art. The dispersing pages fluttering out from the toppling stack is inspired by the library collection’s grand expansion in size and new knowledge platforms beyond books. The expansion is visually alluded to in this site-specific installation – the concurrent transformation of how we learn is captured by the dynamic, dreamlike flight of the bronze pages wafting gracefully through the air.