Generally, I am not sentimental about my shows. They go up and come down as scheduled. At the appointed time, I pack-up the artwork and put it away until the next show or forever.
This isn’t how I feel today, a day after I took down my solo show “Imagining the Artist Book,” at the White Plains Public Library. The exhibition encompassed 12 years of Artist Books.
Today, I feel like I have lost a friend. The show was itself the most lovely I have ever mounted (or may ever mount) with 13 framed or cradled books presented in horizontal and vertical display cases, and a representative selection of 35 of my favorite etchings, drypoints and monoprints beautifully lit and displayed on textured fabric wall panels.
The show in its entirety was more impressive than the sum of the individual images and books. It reflected my thinking. It reflected my style. It was Marc Shanker, the artist. At the same time, the show felt like an organism which is intimately related to me but living independently from me. Like a twin brother who moves away to start a new life in another town but still lives close by.
As the pictures were removed from the walls and the books put in their boxes, I felt as if I was dismantling a living thing, leg by leg and arm by arm, until it was entirely in pieces. Looking back at the empty gallery, I sensed that a physical and mental presence had been removed, like an empty studio after an artist has died. All that remained were the memories.
COVID couldn’t dampen my feeling of accomplishment but it did reduce the number of visitors. The work is now safely stored away in flat files awaiting a rebirth.
Tomorrow, it is back to work!