Where are the books?

This was the only link I followed out of the recent ALA email newsletter. While I like the idea of recycling plane bodies, I don't think I'd want to work in this building. Little-bity submarine-style airplane windows? On nine floors? Mm… no. The architectural spaces I live and work in are, for some reason, really important to me. I want windows. I want space. These aren't just perks, these are "why would I come here every day without them" qualities.

The Profound and the Profane

This morning a very good friend clued me into two incredible examples of nonfunctional art – one of my favorite kinds of art
(see my walls: maps and calendars).

Here is the first example …incredible, beautiful, stairs of fused glass for the suggestion of water. From their website: “….his clients wanted the
outside in, they wanted their stairwell to be like water, like air, like the ocean….“

The next example is maybe not so much beautiful as it is
creative, although people have been using old books as an art medium for a long, long time. I include this one to remind myself to be open-minded even when the art in question makes me wince. And yet… I think Walt Whitman would have approved.

— tangent –

Why did I almost call these pieces nonfunctional art? Well, the glass stairs… I mean people have to walk on them, don’t they? How does that work? I’m sure the installation is stable and safe, but still… glass stairs? They just look too beautiful and delicate for that.

And the books… well… that’s just my own bias. I’ve seen ratty torn-up paperbacks and mauled hardbacks. I know they can’t be read anymore. To be honest, I am very amused by the reincarnations these artists have given the old tomes. Would I have one in my house… well, maybe.