Literary art: 5 amazing art installations to see at Bay Area libraries in San Jose, Lafayette and more

Museums and civic plazas aren’t the only places you’ll find public art installations. Book lovers and art enthusiasts will find dramatic — and often literary — art at libraries from Walnut Creek to San Jose.

So the next time you’re looking to check out a book or enjoy some quiet time in a book-filled space, take the opportunity to check out some cool public art as well.

Here are five fascinating installations to get you started.

“Shh…..Portrait in 12 Volumes of Gray,” Walnut Creek Library

Librarians have been hushing loud chatterers since, well, as long as there have been libraries. At the Walnut Creek Library, however, they have some tongue-in-cheek assistance from Christian Moeller’s “Shh….Portrait in 12 Volumes of Gray.”

At first glance, the installation looks like a really big bookcase — 27 feet high and 8 feet wide — filled with nearly 4,000 sketchbooks in a dozen different shades of gray. But stand in the right spot, and the whimsical image snaps into focus: a two-story-tall librarian holding her finger to her lips in the shushing gesture familiar to noisy library-going kids everywhere.

“The art piece is very tall. In order to see it, you have to be standing in a particular spot in the library,” says Brooke Converse, Contra Costa Library public information officer, who calls the installation “a conversation starter” that “represent(s) the changing nature of modern libraries.”

Completed in 2010, the piece was intended to be interactive, with the artist inviting visitors to get sketchbooks from the library store, fill them in and exchange them for books in the sculpture. “Eventually, the sculpture becomes a container of the notes and memories of the community,” Moeller explains on his website.

The German-born artist and chairman of UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts has done several other well-known installations in Northern California, including a massive “Hands” mural made from 400,000 white plastic chips in a wire mesh on display at San José Mineta International Airport.

Details: See “Shh” at the Walnut Creek Library, which is open Monday-Saturday at 1644 N. Broadway; ccclib.org.

“Skeptacle,” Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose

Art installations can be found throughout the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown San Jose, where 34 pieces of various shapes and sizes form the “Recolecciones” collection by Mel Chin and other artists.

“It’s sprinkled everywhere,” says public information manager Elizabeth Castañeda. Art can be found in hallways, reading rooms and even the library’s restrooms and elevator. “Some (pieces) are very in your face. Some, you have to look for.”

“Skeptacle” belongs in the former camp.

“It’s the largest piece in the collection,” Castañeda says. And it’s blue. Very, very blue.

The name “Skeptacle” is a portmanteau combining “skep” — a domed beehive typically made from straw — and “spectacle.” You’ll find this large beehive-shaped, cherry wood bookcase on the library’s fifth floor, where it houses the master theses — bound in blue — of generations of San Jose State University students. It may be art, but you can thumb through it and learn more about, say, “Counseling the Alcoholic: A Christian Approach” by John R. Edrington or “Selective Influence of Authoritarianism in Children’s Verbal Paired-Associate Learning” by David Lawrence Boyle. The books come courtesy of Milford Bookbinding, Inc. and the work of Charisse Antonopolous, David Murray and Peter Wilson.

“Everything that this building has is amazing,” Castañeda says.

Details: The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library is open daily at 150 E. San Fernando St. on the San Jose State University campus; https://library.sjsu.edu/.

Untitled, San Francisco Main Library

Ann Hamilton and Ann Chamberlain’s art installation will bring back fond memories for anyone who grew up visiting libraries in the pre-digital age.

It’s also a great example of how art can reclaim and repurpose objects that have been deemed unnecessary. The piece utilizes the library’s century-old card catalog, which had been supplanted by an online catalog system. So the two artists took nearly 50,000 of these well-thumbed cards and used them to create a massive mural that covers three levels of a principal wall in the library.

Amazingly, each of these cards has been annotated — by 200 people writing in a dozen different languages — with a quote from its corresponding book, or another work associated with the title, or in some cases, tiny sketches. A tiny King Babar and Queen Celeste are drawn on a Jean de Brunhoff card. Music cascades across a card for composer Bernard Grun’s Mozart-inspired novel.

The piece “is one of the most beloved artworks inside the Main Library and photographed often by our visitors,” says Michelle Jeffers, the library’s chief of community programs and partnerships.

“I was giving a tour of the Main Library (recently) and my tour group was totally bewitched by the card catalog walls,” she says. “This happens all the time. People think they are walking by wallpaper and then they take a closer look. As soon as visitors realize what it is, people cannot help but run up to the wall to run their hands across the beautiful soft-paper surface of the cards. Then they begin a closer read of the ‘annotations’ on the cards, the little drawings and comments that correspond to the books and materials that are the subjects of the cards.

“Many are swept back into their old childhood, reminiscing about visiting a library as a child and looking through the card catalog for materials. I love that it conjures up so many warm memories of libraries.”

Hamilton, a Ohio native, has had her work exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Chamberlain, who died in 2008, was the program director for the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin.

Details: San Francisco Main Library is open daily at 100 Larkin St.; sfpl.org.

“Speechless,” Lafayette Library and Learning Center

Brian Goggin’s nearly 16-foot-tall work of art towers over visitors as they approach the Lafayette library through the plaza at First Street and Golden Gate Way. The finely crafted, cast-bronze piece evokes book pages flying off a large disheveled stack, which is leaning precariously and giving the distinct impression that it could fall at any moment. (Don’t worry. It can’t.)

“Movement emanates from a sculpted stack of bronze-cast paper, teetering as if stirred by a gentle breeze,” Goggin explains. “Capturing the essence of fluidity and texture posed a formidable challenge. My goal was to create something reminiscent of the fluid strokes of a Japanese brush painting.”

The bronze pages, which seem to defy gravity as they float gently into the sky, are etched with images and text borrowed from material in the library’s own collection.

“Researching an eclectic array of literature, history, science, poetry, and nonfiction, my assistant, Rebeca Bollinger, and I meticulously scanned pages to etch onto bronze plates,” Goggins says. “These plates form layered original compositions, echoing the fluidity of ideas flowing through the pages.”

The San Francisco-based artist has several other notable art installations in the Bay Area, including “Language of Birds,” the famous flying books you can see at the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach.

Details: The Lafayette Library and Learning Center is open Monday-Sunday at 3491 Mount Diablo Blvd.; ccclib.org.

“Free Verse,” Redwood City Public Library

New Jersey artist Kate Dodd’s wonderfully whimsical and captivating art installation should feel very familiar to anyone who has kids or who ever imagined themselves sailing off to the land of the wild things. The colorful images and vibrant text included in the swirling piece of art, installed in 2021 in the library’s Family Place, are inspired by beloved children’s books.

“I think people like the reinterpretation, and they like the familiarity — seeing the imagery from ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ ‘Go, Dog. Go!,’ ‘The Snowy Day’ — just in a way they haven’t thought about before,” says Derek Wolfgram the interim director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services for Redwood City.

The images and text are printed on pieces of clear vinyl, then hung in a swirl, ascending toward the ceiling. Sun shines through the skylight above, transforming the piece as the hours slip by.

“It looks different at different times in the day,” Wolfgram says. “Whether you are there in the daytime or the nighttime, you might get a different experience looking at it.”

Dodd’s work includes imagery from some of the library’s most popular children’s books, identified through library checkout records and by children’s librarians. Those books include “A Bad Case of Stripes” by David Shannon, “Dreamers” by Yuyi Morales, “Freight Train” by Donald Crews, “Go, Dog. Go!,” by P. D. Eastman, “Hooray for Birds!” by Lucy Cousins, “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats, “The Ugly Vegetables” by Grace Lin and, of course, those wild things by Maurice Sendak.

Details: The Redwood City Public Library is open daily at 1044 Middlefield Road; www.redwoodcity.org.