m i r i a m s c h a e r
a r t i s t 's s t a t e m e n t
199 eighth avenue a3
brooklyn, ny 11215
phone 718-788-2029
e-mailmschaer@earthlink.net
The need to tell stories goes back as far as anyone can remember.
When the story of the hunt was discovered on the walls of the
caves of Lascaux, it proved not only that those images had survived
10,000 years, but that the drive to record and communicate the
reality of our lives is at least as ancient. As is the desire to create the
vessels in which such stories live and speak. The glyphs, characters,
pictographs and signs etched onto Mesopotamian cylinders, carved
into Egyptian scarabs, applied to Chinese scrolls and painted on the
pages of medieval manuscripts are only a few of the ways
storytellers have chosen to preserve their tales.
The human story reveals itself through a vast library of books and
booklike structures. This is the romance of the book, and what my
books are about. They are stories contained in forms so suitably
shaped and expressive that the experience of turning their pages
jolts the skeptical reader with the pleasures of unexpected meaning
and sensation.
In form, my books are kinetic sculptures created with texts, images,
papers, fabrics and, often, the objects that inspired the questions my
stories seek to answer. A bridal decoration I found outside a
reception hall in the trash, evokes the mysterious couples who
celebrated their marriages inside that building: Who were they?
How long ago did they wed? What did they dream? Did they last?
Many question the value of creating unique books in a
mass-produced, computer-saturated society. Yet even the vast
bodies of information computers print out are finally contained
within books and booklike structures, some real, some virtual, a
new and metaphorical architecture of files, folders, volumes,
archives and the like.
Sometimes I try to image a world without books. But I can only
imagine it as a story told by a book. A single, unique book I
suddenly wish to make.
m i r i a m s c h a e r t i t l e p a g e