From the Library of Seeds, 2021

Each work within the series entitled “From the Library of…” is a depiction of an imaginary library housing a multitude of containers or repositories for knowledge, represented by hand-blown mirrored objects. These archives propose to contain knowledge within unique, material objects “as mysterious as the knowledge itself,” suggesting that knowledge is “potentially beyond words or books.” Viewers look within each frame to a vista of endlessly-refracted hexagonal architecture, implying that each library is in itself vast, and also just one of many possible libraries.

The set of forms in this library is loosely based on 18th–century seed containers, in which seeds were held in by a stopper at the bottom that was opened to allow their dispersal from below. The shapes of the volumes in this library are based on the five elemental shapes of seeds: oblong, elliptic, ovate, obovate, oval. McElheny explains, “this work relates both to this idea of a literal seed library—like the one in Norway—but also the metaphorical concept of seeds. What are the seeds of ideas, the seeds of knowledge?”