Artist's Statement

The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most frequently Challenged and Banned works of literature in our country’s history. Since the early 1960’s, it has been repeatedly scrubbed from school curriculums, stripped from public libraries, educators have been fired … all on grounds relating to the novel’s “use of profanity and sexual references” … “subversion” … and “being a part of an overall communist plot”. The irony being, that these Challenges brought in our democracy are the true subversions themselves, to the Constitution, and our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Not fake news: The Banning of Books is alive and well in America…and communities are up in arms on both sides of this culture war.

My memory of reading The Catcher in the Rye in ninth grade is a seminal one. For the first time I felt a deep connection to school curriculum literature. It resonated. It opened up classroom conversations I could never have at home. There were adults out there that actually understood. Fast forward… I picked up a copy of The Catcher in the Rye last year. Now I read it from the other side of Holden’s cliff. Brilliant subtleties unfolded from my new vantage point. I reconnected with my ninth-grade self. I wanted to say, ‘it all turned out ok.’

With this mixed-media installation, I celebrate the persecuted. I hoist the knocked about works of literature onto a pedestal, keeping them in view forevermore. Through the interplay of color and black & white imagery, spoken word, quoted text, social reaction, redaction, and fleeting audio, the viewer experiences at once the control of knowledge, and the humiliation of deprivation. They stand in isolation to contemplate the fragility of what is at stake.  To question who speaks for them.

I owe my school a debt of gratitude. It stood steadfast against Challenges from the self-anointed arbiters of our morality. Challenges that censor and remove our books from sight for over two years as they travel through a review bureaucracy, until they are typically reconstituted into school curriculums and public libraries … until the next time.

Or worse…the Challenge is successful, and a work of literature is Banned from view. Works that connect people to others, and to themselves. At its most stimulating, literature holds up a mirror. Provokes a reaction. Spurs intellectual discourse on essential social and cultural issues. Brings it all out into the bright light of day. It is our past. It is our present. It is our future. It is being censored.