Librography
A one-off artist’s book, made by request for a show at the Huntley Gallery, Cal Poly Pomona University Library: LA Biblioteca.
January 2020. Paper, mixed media; 9.25” tall, 10.5” long, 8.25” wide (open, standing)
Here’s the statement as written for the catalog:
The book Librography is a home library of collected pieces of Dalton’s fragmented creative process, bound and shelved into organization. It is, in this way, like anyone else’s home library; a self-portrait, though probably more inscrutable than revealing to anyone besides the librarian herself (we do like to think we can decode a person, or an institution, by skimming their library’s spines). It is also a travel library, a charm that can be carried outside, set at bedsides foreign and domestic to ground the librarian when she wakes up feeling out of place: a Dalton’s Book of Days.
Dalton’s current practice originates in a youthful “collecting” and re-binding of bits of fancy end-papers. Unmaking and re-making, patterns and collections, indices and catalogings are still very much her thing. To piece together this library/book, she pulled from her own Italian marbled paper stacks (too precious! never before cut into!), as well as other handmade surfaces, hoarded book forms, and fragments of her writing. When open, it is two-sided like a library shelf, and exalts its endpages by baring start and stop simultaneously. When closed, each shelved book is enfolded in its origins—of Dalton’s first creative obsessions, and of Italian artisanal book construction and collection.
Digital mini-zines of four of the books’ contents below. Click on each image to load an online page-turn version.
