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A 60” x 6” piece of 3/8” black slate rests on two 1/2” square stainless steel rods that extend 6” directly from the wall. On the left end of this shelf rests a stack of 60 flat unassembled cardboard boxes, each of which is laminated on its exterior side with a different Xerox made from color slides of the Melzer children at play, which were provided by Marty Melzer and were current in 1978. Each box separated by a sheet of glassine paper is stacked in book form, the cardboard edges of which are brushed with rubber cement sealing them as in a pad. A piece of slate of the same size as the pad is placed on top of it as a weight and as a book cover. Since the book takes up only 4” x 6” of the shelf, the rest is left empty with enough space for any or all of the boxes that might be assembled and displayed on it. Although I did not intend to dictate how this piece should be dealt with, I did consider that there would be no urgency to assemble the boxes merely to see the pictures since none of the them were unfamiliar or were presented in any but a straight forward manner. There are no surprise images; the pictures simply stay the same. I did, however, suggest that by design this piece offers the option of assembling one box per year and displaying it on the shelf thereafter. At that rate the book would exceed Marty’s life expectancy, at that time, with space left over on the shelf and pages left in the “book”. I also considered that one might observe the aging of the first boxes assembled as compared with those more recently assembled, less handled or faded from exposure, lining up year after year as lives pass and children age. Either way whether assembled or unassembled the slate is only 60” long.

This shelf resembles, perhaps, some fireplace mantles or homey altars staging generationally focused iconic objects, old pictures, bibles with names, or just family urns.