Whispers at the Library: An Installation
Doris Weiner

"Whispers at the Library," like "running with scissors" bespeaks a passionately impatient response to constraint.  What if we had nine feet high walls, a cavernous public space and were restricted as to light and sound?  The challenge invokes the muse; it fires the cauldron of creativity; it makes the tame yearn to be wild.

In this installation Doris Weiner boldly exploits the eternal tension between convention and the unfettered creative impulse.  An artist who insists upon using only her own abstract "alphabet" of marks and shapes to speak to those who view her work, Ms. Weiner has deftly accepted the challenge of mounting a multi-sensory installation within the walls of a rural Connecticut library.

Her work evolved over the past 40 years into pieces that have left the canvas, taken form in wood, metals, polymers, and plastics as they bulged out from the wall, then metamorphosed into free standing two-, then three- dimensional and ever expanding entities.  She moved on with smooth, richly colored, highly lacquered surfaces to mammoth, heroic sized behemoths in dynamic, commercial spaces and back again to rejoin the wall, this time with neon tubes and suggestions of infinity contained for the moment in boxes.  The work progressed through panels and statements and reiterations to what she has named, "living walls" with projected light, images and sound upon her now familiar, yet organic elements.  Scale has always excited this artist; audacious command of the space has always excited her audience.

"Whispers at the Library" brings Doris Weiner into a new level of response.  She "makes something happen" between the art and the community groups who are users of the space that is full of anticipation and engagement.  As you stand in the space, you are invited to sense that something is about to change; something has already begun to change, and it involves you, the viewer.  Try to continue being in the library, as you have always expected to be in a library and experience the transformative suggestions of her work upon your preconceived ideas.

"Whispers at the Library," like running with scissors, is not for the faint of heart.
Mary Eames Ucci