Buzz Spector

Artist/writer Buzz Spector is a key figure in the realms of art and artists' books, having shown across the country and around the world since the late 1970s. With visual art and written word, Spector probes the book from every possible perspective - as an object, a text, an act,

a social condition, a political moment. Even the book's psychology and eroticism are explored in the artist's sculptures, site-specific installations, paintings, and photographs.

Ever since he manipulated his first book three decades ago, he has been obsessively - and very carefully - tearing, painting, and collaging upon

found volumes or books of his own making. He has used books to build walls, fill boats, and has even presented his entire collection (Unpacking my Library, 1994) on a single shelf, organized by spine height from tallest to shortest.

Most recently, Spector has taken to photographing subsets of his impressive library, creating graceful large-scale Polaroids of all his books by certain authors or artists that have influenced him, including Ann Hamilton and Dieter Roth. The resulting still lives, with books stacked and leaned spine-away, are abstract homages as well as humble self-portraits- simple, pure, and quietly seductive. Altered or objectified, Spector's transformed books lose their intellectual aura and become more aesthetic symbols suggesting their place in the world and in our lives.

Buzz Spector's work has been exhibited in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He currently lives in Ithaca, NY, where he is the Chair of the Department of Art at Cornell.

Leah Stoddard, Director, Second Street Gallery