The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn

The Beinecke Library is pleased to announce a new exhibition, The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn, on view at the Library from January 13 to March 27, 2010, and as a web exhibition online.

Seven lady saints, 1985

During a career that has spanned more than thirty years, American book artist and writer Erica Van Horn’s body of work has included prints and works on paper, elaborately illustrated unique books, and printed and editioned works in a wide variety of formats.

The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn highlights the Beinecke Library’s outstanding collection of Erica Van Horn’s work, representing all aspects of the artist’s development, calling special attention to several themes: the artist’s frequent exploration of the details of her life, the objects around her, the routines of her days, and her most familiar relationships; her long fascination with the ways language both describes and creates community, even as it determines individual identity and shapes personal memory; her interest in the essential elements of narrative forms and structures, in both word and image; and her frequent use and re-use of saved or salvaged materials as the raw materials of her work, documenting her creative process and making both beauty and meaning from fragments and remainders.