A Connected Art (Rough Draft)

Artwork is a luxury that humans are thankfully able to enjoy in life. Most people believe that art work only appears in museums. There are many forms of artwork that people don’t understand, so they simply dismiss it as useless. Here at Clemson University there are many different forms of art that simply go unnoticed by the normal student or member of the community. One of these art forms is a structure that resembles a silo that is located just outside of Barre Hall here on Campus that corresponds to a book in Cooper Library.

This piece of art work is one that offers the viewer more than just a blank stare. When a person ventures to do some investigating on this mysterious structure they build a connection with the artist. When a person takes the action to find out what this structure’s meaning represents it offers the viewer an incentive to come up with an answer. This particular case of artwork on campus is more thought provoking than any other form of art since it demands the viewer to make several connections and interpret the specific meaning of many signs.

The structural aspect of this form of artwork is a silo structure that blends in which the common architecture of campus. Many students around campus have seen the silo but few have taken the time to try to understand what it represents. Some of its most prominent features include a bronze roof that features a interesting lattice of steel work, two interior benches, two entrances that are opposite of each other and perhaps the most important, a bronze plate in the center of the floor that has the words “REF P211.T45 COOPER” written on it. All of these characteristics play a crucial role in the meaning of the artwork. The bronze plate on the floor references the reader to Cooper Library, to look up a call number of a book located in the reference section.

In between all the book shelves in Cooper Library lies a single book that has been placed on the shelf for one reason only, to make a solid connection with the artistic silo located on campus. The call number P211 T.45 will direct the reader to an average sized black book that has its call number printed on the front cover. On one of the first few pages of the book there is a reference to the silo location on campus. There are only a few words in the beginning and end of the book that include “field and join”. The book has several mind boggling characteristics such as pages that appear and feel to have dirt rubbed on them. In the front and back of the book on two pages there is a shape contains many lines inside of a circle. On the last two pages there appears to be a watermark on the paper that can only be seen when it is help up to the light. One other peculiar characteristic of the book is its location in the library. The books that surround its spot on the shelf in the reference section are about the history of writing. When the call number is searched in the library catalog, the genres that appear are: crosshatching, fossil poetry, origin of writing and latent grammatical constructions. Perhaps the most creative aspect of the little black book is the attached sign in sheet that is on the back cover which contains hundreds of names and dates of all the people who have read the book. What could all of these signs and connections possibly mean?

The author David Tillinghast, must have put a lot of thought into the appearance and theme of the silo structure that was constructed in 2001. In order for the purpose of the artwork to be exposed, the individual has to take the time to enter the interesting looking structure to observe the connecting clue. The silo’s location on campus must have been picked very carefully. In the morning hours of the day the silo’s shadow points into the direction of the library. When the person inside the silo notices and reads the bronze plaque on the floor of the structure, they are aligned in the direction toward the library. Tillinghast who designed the silo made sure that the dimensions of it were correctly scaled with the actual sized versions that are used in the real world. While some of these characteristics seem to jump out at the viewer, the artist did not want the silo structure to look misplaced on campus. The architecture of the silo is similar to many other buildings around campus. Since the artist decided to place benches inside the structure, he wanted it to serve the public as other purposes than just a form of art.

The book portion of the piece of art has an even deeper meaning than the silo structure. When the little black book is pulled off the shelf it looks like something that is straight out of a movie. The book appears to be so secretive and unknown due to its location in the middle of the reference section which has nothing to do with any kind of art. The entire book is filled with rich black and white images of grain and plants. This is obviously directly connected with the meaning of the silo. Silos are used to hold the very thing that is pictured all throughout the book. On the few last pages of the book there appears to be several watermarks that must represent something important. (I will write more about this in the final) In the beginning and end of the book there are several brown pages that appear to be covered with dirt. This may have been used by the author to show that grain can only be prosperous if it has dirt and healthy soil all around it. The shapes that appear in the front and back of the book also allude to the silo structure. In the roof of the silo the supporting metal work is in the exact same shape as that of the ones printed in the book. Since Tillinghast had enough influence to build a silo on campus he must have had the opportunity to have the choice of where he would have liked his book to be placed in the library. Why did he choose the “history of writing” section in the reference area? Perhaps he wanted to emphasize that writing along with agriculture were related, since they improved the life of human kind so much. The last attribute of the book that would be noticed by a reader is a sheet of paper that is attached to the back cover of the book. Tillinhast gave instructions for anyone who read the book to record the date and sign their name. Tillinghast must have wanted to place this sheet here to see how many people would actually discover the connection between the silo and the book. Although the book might offer a deeper explanation of the meaning of the artwork, it is not necessarily the most important aspect of it.

The combination of these two well thought and planned components make a wonderful and complex form or artwork that can never be appreciated in a museum. Tillinghast made a new and innovative effort to make art something much more than just a painting hanging on the wall. He pushed the limits and created a work of art that will always be interconnected with Clemson University in more ways than one. This connected art form illustrates many different points that Tillinghast wanted to emphasize in a successful and complex way.