STORRS, CT — As the University of Connecticut’s principal repository of printed and electronic information resources, the Homer Babbidge Library is home to literally millions of words — words that have been used to give expression to countless thoughts and ideas.
To celebrate the myriad forms that human language can take, Linda Foster, an artist from Goleta, Calif., is creating a work of art that focuses on words, specifically those spoken by or written in the languages of the University’s rich linguistic community.
Titled, Hamlet: A Cast of Shadows, the project draws its inspiration from dialogue in Act II of William Shakespeare’s play:
Polonius: “What do you read, my lord?”
Hamlet: “Words, words, words.”
“Words,” translated into multiple languages and written in three-inch letters, will be cut from nearly invisible vinyl and affixed, upside down and reversed, to the bottom interior of four west-facing windows on Level 3 of Babbidge Library. As the afternoon sun moves across those windows, flooding the space with light, “words” will be “written” in legible shadows on the carpet directly below the windows. The seasonal rotation of the earth will cause the shadows to shift in shape and size, marking time and space.
Norman Stevens, director emeritus of libraries has worked closely with the artist on the project. “It is not hard to imagine the beauty of the shadows cast by the world’s languages,” he said. “Individual, distinctive marks of time and cultures, alphabets and characters represent our individuality, while demonstrating an inclusive, common bond: our fundamental need to communicate.”
Stevens notes that some 6,000 languages are in use worldwide, and Hamlet has been translated into more than 69 languages during the last 400 years.
As part of the project, and to celebrate diversity, the University Libraries will conduct an informal census of the languages written or spoken by members of the UConn community.
Participants will also be asked to contribute translations of "words" for possible use in the installation or in the dedication program. Details of the census will be available on the University Libraries website: www.lib.uconn.edu/.
Foster’s art focuses on artists’ books, or works of art in the form of a book, which she has created for some 25 years. A graduate of Grand Canyon University in Arizona, she holds an M.F.A. from University of California at Santa Barbara, where she did a similar installation in 1997. She teaches at Santa Barbara City College.
“I'm looking at this project as an artist’s book and thinking of the window as a transparent page with the text on the page cast out into the room as shadows. There’s a collective body of knowledge, ideas and images that get cast onto our thinking, influencing how we think. Shakespeare has certainly cast a huge shadow on all the literature that has come after him,” she says.
Light and time are of equal importance to Foster. “I’m very interested in the sun, she notes. “I could do this artificially far more easily, but light is the way the human race has marked the passing of time -- through sundials, Stonehenge, and standing stones or cairns. At this point in my life, I’m also very aware that time is passing.”
Plans call for Foster to complete the design during the next several months and to install her work in April 2009. Dedication of the installation will include a talk by the artist, and recitations of the dialogue between Polonius and Hamlet in as many languages as willing participants can be found.
“This project is an extraordinary way of recognizing and celebrating our individual differences through the common denominator of language,” says Brinley Franklin, Vice Provost for University Libraries. “We’re pleased that the installation will enable UConn library users to study and learn in an environment that celebrates diversity and the power of words to transmit culture over centuries of time.”
Hamlet: A Cast of Shadows, complements other works of art that celebrate books, reading, and information both inside and outside Babbidge Library. These include Dudley Giberson’s Storrs Murini Window on the B Level of the library, which represents the evolution of symbols from cave drawings to the alphabet; the massive Stonebook Universe, sculpted by Kubach/Wilmsen from Finnish granite, on the plaza between Babbidge Library and the Dodd Research Center; John Magnan's carved wooden Pencil Book, housed in a display case at the internal entrance to Babbidge Library on the Plaza Level; Werner Pfeiffer's Endangered Species sculpture, recently installed in Bookworms Café; and Ilun Averbuch’s Dove Tower and Steps to the Bottom of a Pyramid, with its allusion to the use of message-carrying pigeons, located on the quadrangle west of Babbidge Library.
Development and installation of Hamlet: A Cast of Shadows will cost approximately $5,000. The library is seeking donors who wish to help support the project. Interested parties should contact Linda Perrone, director of external relations for the University Libraries, at linda.perrone@uconn.edu, or 860-486-0451.
Contributions are tax-deductible and should be made payable to the Homer Babbidge Library Unrestricted Fund through the University of Connecticut Foundation.
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