Book Stacks – Assignment #1

The Midnight Murder – Book Stack 1

This book stack sculpture is modelled after a classic “whodunnit” book. As an avid enjoyer of murder mystery books, I wanted to have fun with this first book stack. The books are carefully arranged so the titles can tell a story, in this case, a very simple “whodunnit” story. The first book ‘The Midnight Murder’ is the piece’s title and gives the viewer a sense of the story. The books vaguely outline someone alone (‘Alone’) at night (‘The Dark Night’) who then gets murdered (‘The Twist of a Knife’ and ‘Death’). From there we learn there were witnesses to this crime (‘The Witnesses’) which leads to the murderer being found and eventually prosecuted (‘Suspect’ and ‘Found’), leading to justice (‘Justice’) once the case is solved. Collecting these books was a difficult process, only one of them was from home while I scoured the library for all of the other ones. I had a general idea and used books to fill in the spaces for the final narrative. I found the best way of arranging the books in the case of all three of my pieces was to stack them directly on top of one another.

Absent Fathers? – Book Stack 2

**Trigger Warning** This next piece and the artist’s statement include themes/mentions of familial violence and abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

The title of this book stack sculpture is ‘Absent Father?’ as shown with the book at the very top of the stack. Through this sculpture, viewers can look at the titles of the books from top to bottom, to gauge a general idea of the story or history presented. The themes of this sculpture are significantly more personal to me compared to the last one, it gives the viewer a look into life before, during and after my parent’s divorce. It is important to note that my parents divorced when I was only a child, so the perspective of this history/narrative comes from me as an adult with a more complex understanding of everything. As mentioned the narrative is split into three pieces, first, it’s life before the divorce, which includes ‘Hard Truths’ to ‘Coping with Family Violence.’ The before section touches on what I was going through leading up to my parent’s divorce. Although my memory is mostly blacked out from this time, I remember the struggle I had absorbing that my father wasn’t a good man, or even in some cases, a good father. From the violence I remember encountering to his allegedly cheating before my parents got divorced was hard for me as a child. The second piece of the narrative is during the divorce, which is from ‘Divorce and Disengagement’ to ‘Fathers and Daughters’. This touches on the breakup of our family and the evolving father/daughter relationship between my dad and me as I was forced to examine him in a new light. The third section is after the divorce, which is from ‘Daddy, We Need You Now!’ to ‘Learning to Live.’ This section details how my father slowly became more absent in my life, learning to come to terms with this, eventually working through those emotions, living life with my single mother and struggling, and eventually learning to live with my complicated relationship with my father, accepting that as a piece of me. I went about collecting the books the same way as the last stack, this time though, they were all from the library.

Survivor – Book Stack 3

**Trigger Warning** This next piece and the artist’s statement include themes/mentions of sexual violence and abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

The title of this book stack sculpture is simply, Survivor, unlike the first two, the book at the top is not the title, instead, it’s the beginning of the story.