2013, San Diego Central Library, 8.5' x 50' x 4", books, nylon and stainless steel fittings, stainless steel mesh.
For the new San Diego Central Library, Donald Lipski was asked to design a work for the 300 seat auditorium, an important new civic space that serves as a venue for concerts, lectures and overflow City Council meetings. He lined the wall with 1700 open books, overlapping and screwed into the wall, and covered with stainless steel mesh. The work also functions as an important acoustical element in the auditorium.The work was commissioned in 2003, but political delays in the building of the Rob Quigley designed library kept it from being completed until 2013. The title, as is Lipski’s habit in his book works, comes from the title of one of the books used in the sculpture, Hiding My Candy, by The Lady Chablis, a female impersonator from Savannah, Georgia, made famous in the John Berendt book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
