Approach to the Site

Artist Timothy C. Ely (American, born 1949)

Publisher Water Street Press, New York, 1986

Date1986

Dimensionsslipcase: 14 7/8 x 11 3/8 x 1 1/2 in. (378 x 289 x 38mm)
book: 14 5/8 x 10 7/8 x 3/4 in. (372 x 277 x 19mm)
page: 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 in. (362 x 270mm)

MediumOriginal binding: painted boards with collaged design Original prints: offset lithographs in colors Text: photolithography Paper: Arches ivory wove paper, watermarked

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss

Object number

1987.285

Not on View

Label TextTimothy C. Ely, Approach to the Site (1986) Tim Ely wrote the following statement about his book Approach to the Site: “Approach to the Site is a metaphoric excursion to and into ‘the archetypal library.’ The library is the locator (a la Borges) of the optical center of an arc. I have been fascinated for all of my working life by the dynamic of libraries and their ability to coalesce culture and act as a mirror of the time in which they are contained. Museums hold a similar fascination but without the shuffle. As a mirror of the heavens, the archetypal library was liberally applied across the Egyptian landscape for millennia as a way to bestow universal order on Earth, as reflected in the alchemical maxim ‘As Above, So Below’. In Approach to the Site, I wanted to pay homage to the cartographic experience I had at Suzzallo Library on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle in 1973. I opened a drawer only to find a very large map of the face of Mars. Here was an aspect of landscape painting I had overlooked and I realized that the land could be annotated from above. I was transformed and returned to the studio to work on my first “atlas.” I also discovered on that same trip, my interest in the incomprehensible, as I looked upon “Atlas’s” [sic] written in Chinese or Russian. Math and science books in these same languages looked correct but I could grasp little. Much of the ground work for my later efforts was laid at a very early age and the above notations are only a pair of illogical koans [riddles used in Zen Buddhism to aid in meditation] of the sort that turn one on the path of true following. The unseen is rarely invisible.”Exhibition HistorySplendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, Feb. 14--May 11, 2003