Nancy Jo Haselbacher

 
   The existing art work I chose to place permanently is called "525 North Shore Road: Kept." Several years ago I exhibited this piece as a temporary installation at the Brand Library and Art Gallery in Glendale, CA. It is part of my ongoing series of works that represent the traces of people who still actually check out library books. I'm really interested in how the marks left behind in library books are specific to each genre of book and have a few pieces in the series that represent that.
   As I began work on this series, I really wanted to include a piece in the Brand exhibition that showed marks left behind by me in my own personal library. From popsicle drips and smudgy fingerprint to underlined words, I have always actively had a book in my hand while going through my daily life, and the marks left behind are evidence of it. Some of my first joyful experiences with books came from going to the library and picking out books to borrow and I love that libraries still exist and are being newly built today in spite of e-readers and the internet.
   This piece would exist permanently in the windows of the Seinajoki Library in northern Finland. The translucent images from my library books would be greatly enlarged and permanently attached or printed onto the library windows. As the light changes the images become more or less transparent allowing light to filter the interior and exterior environment in varying degrees of visibility. Words blend, meanings form and change and the artwork is constantly in flux. Last year I traveled to this area of Finland, where my mother's side of the family hails from and felt an immediate kinship to the land and architecture.
   I chose this library to exhibit my work in since it was built a few years ago and is a beautiful modern, serene building. I imagine reading or researching there would be a wonderful experience and I like the idea of my artwork living in a land that feels like home but is so far away. The library design was chosen to weave the new and the existing library together. Conceptually I think this is the way libraries, as well as books, will survive by marrying the old with the new. This idea echoes my intention in using books from my past in a current piece of my own artwork.

525 North Shore Road: Kept at the Seinajoki Library, Finland
Original interior photo sans artwork by Tuomas Uusheimo

Nancy Jo Haselbacher’s work explores issues of mystery, movement, and presence within the body and land. Using printmaking and photography, she reveals others’ direct or indirect imprint, temporal records of her own experience, and ephemeral traces of inhabitation. Her work has been exhibited at The Craft and Folk Museum, Los Angeles, Temple University, Rome, The Museum of Urban Art and Culture, Boston, Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles, and The Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT. She lives and works in Los Angeles.


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