I took a walk through Virginia Woolf’s words last week. I moved slowly, quietly. I felt reverent at the silence and the sight of her poetry flowing from the rafters in the light-filled Ellipse Gallery in the tower of the Fresno State Library.
Ane Thon Knutsen watches as conference goers walk through her “Kew Gardens” installation.
I was there early in the morning on Saturday, June 8, to experience Ane Thon Knutsen’s breathtaking installation of “Kew Gardens” at the 33rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, June 5-9 at Fresno State University.
I was among dozens of other conference participants, each of us lost in our own experience of the unique art installation, each of us feeling lucky to be there, as our view of the installation almost did not happen.
Catastrophe averted
The day before the conference began, the library’s air conditioning stopped working properly — and Fresno was in the middle of a heat wave. That meant that our visit to the installation had to be rescheduled and reformatted.
Our viewing of Ane’s brilliant art installation transformed itself from an elaborate evening arts event with refreshments, poetry, and two keynote talks to a one-hour early morning walk-through in awesome silence.
Kudos to conference organizer J. Ashley Foster for being able to turn on a dime with humor and grace. And kudos to everyone on campus — from librarian Melissa to academic deans and library and student center staff — who made the change possible.
Angling for a view
As I walked through the installation, I was struck by how much I had to use my body to view the art and read the words. I had to read with my legs, feet, torso, and arms, as well as my mind, eyes, and hands.
Sitting to read Woolf’s words.
I had to sway, walk, crouch, take a step backwards, step sideways, step forwards. I also had to stand still and wait patiently for the bright morning sunlight to change slightly and for the strips to still themselves in the shifting air so I could read Woolf’s words.
I watched as other viewers did the same. They stood still. They craned their necks upwards. They crouched. They bent. They sat down. Some even lay down, quietly giggling as the words wafted over their heads and their bodies, ruffled by the wispy breeze generated by weak air conditioning and the movements of those walking by.
About the “Kew Gardens” installation
J. Ashley Foster, conference organizer and associate professor at Fresno State University, and Jane Goldman, reader at the University of Glasgow, at the installation viewing.
Ane spent five years planning her adaptation of Woolf’s short story. It consists of 1,514 letterpress-printed sheets on translucent 18 gms kozo, a Japanese paper.
The sheets are arranged in 94 chains. each 18 sheets long, and they include all the words and punctuation marks that compose Woolf’s short story “Kew Gardens.” The printed words follow the colors named in the story, changing as each color is mentioned.
Ane explains the installation as an “organic book allowing you to walk through the pages, like insects in a flowerbed.”
Later, after the viewing, she said the installation no longer felt like it was just hers, as she had now shared it with dozens of people who love Woolf’s words.
About Ane Thon Knutsen
This was not Ane’s first exhibit focused on Woolf’s words. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. She has won numerous awards for her work and owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.
Ane gave an artist talk on Friday evening during the conference.
Here is more about her work:
- She debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library during the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11, 2023.
- In “Printed Works,” she adapted a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories. The exhibit focused on Woolf’s poetic short stories “Blue” and “Green.” The printed pages were collected and are being stored in book form in FGCU Bradshaw Library’s Archives and Special Collections.
- She first brought her love of Virginia Woolf and her love of typesetting together in A Printing Press of One’s Own, a hand-set volume by the same name, which she debuted at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Reading in June of 2017.
The photos below will explain the “Kew Gardens” installation far better than my words can.
View of the “Kew Gardens” installation as we walked into the Library Ellipse Gallery.
Walking through Woolf’s words.
Sometimes we had to crane our necks to get a view of the words.
Standing to the side to read Woolf.
Some folks sat to ponder Woolf’s words.
And some even lay down to get the right view.
