Works > The Library

We found mica in the forest, way up north in a now disused mica mine first opened during WWII. For years, the skyscrapers in New York were firmly planted in Mid-town and down at the end of the island not by choice, but because there the dense pegmatite rich rock was exposed at the surface – mica schist strong enough to hold the weight of towers. This same type of rock inhabits the coast of Maine, vast areas of Scotland and Riverside Park along the Hudson. As a kid growing up on the East Coast, from New York to New England, I know Mica from streets that glinted in the sun, playgrounds peopled by boulders that seemed made of silver and gold, rocks on the beach with layers you could peel open like pages in a book. Peter told me mineral samples of Mica are sometimes termed ‘books’. My mother remembers finding books of Mica in the alley next to the building where she grew up in Brooklyn. The sidewalks in New York are not paved with gold, but with Mica. Edgar Allan Poe lived across from Riverside Park when he is rumoured to have written The Raven. If you find a stone in the area and leave it on the granite plaque on West 83rd street, your book of Mica becomes part of a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I imagine all these volumes together. A library composed of only rocks and minerals, every layer another narrative. It continues to grow.