Library of Wooden Hearts

3146 Japanese Red Cedar wood blocks
Northern Alps Art Festival 2024, Omachi, Nagano, Japan.

In a former library in a permanently closed high school, there no longer remain books made out of (wooden) paper. Now it is occupied by a Library of Wooden Hearts.

Two monumental curved wooden shapes sit inside the room surrounded by empty wooden shelves and polished wooden floors. As you enter you realise the round shapes are not solid or closed, but are instead two open walls made of thousands of stacked wooden blocks. Once inside, the reddish pinks and grey circular patterns of the curved walls envelop you. Are you inside a mural sculpture, a sculpture mural, or is it a giant drawing?

Each wood block shows the stained cores and growth rings of young Japanese red cedar trees, which to me, look like the hearts of thousands of trees, their impressive round shapes revealing the colour of the tree’s life blood, its red sap.

English