Owls Head / Rosamond Purcell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Purcell, Rosamond Wolff.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Purcell, Rosamond Wolff--Friends and associates.

Purcell, Rosamond Wolff.

Buckminster, William, 1922---Anecdotes.

Buckminster, William.

Buckminster, William, 1922-.

Antique dealers--Maine--Owls Head--Anecdotes.

Antique dealers.

Women photographers--United States--Anecdotes.

Women photographers.

Photographers--United States--Anecdotes.

Photographers.

Friendship.

Friends and associates.

Maine--Owls Head.

United States.

Genre:

Anecdotes.

Autobiographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

239 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Quantuck Lane Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., [2003]

Summary:

On the way to Owls Head Lighthouse, you couldn't help but drive by William Buckminster's property, eleven acres packed with...well...stuff -- a vast array of scrap metal and windows, possibly the largest collection of wooden lobster buoys in the world -- all of it in states of disintegration. Once an antiques shop and a scrapyard, this jumbled collection had become something of a tourist attraction in itself. Rosamond Purcell, the Boston-based artist and photographer whom Ricky Jay calls the "doyenne of decay," discovered Buckminister's place more than twenty years ago and was immediately and permanently awestruck. Best known for her work in the back rooms of natural history museums, Purcell plunged into Buckminster's vast realm with the compulsive curiosity of a true collector -- but her ideas of value don't always coincide with traditional antiques shoppers. A pile of broken clocks, busted birdhouses, mountains of chandeliers -- Buckminster wonders what Purcell will do with the things she buys. "This is the kind of thing I'd take to the dump." he tells her. But Purcell will bestow on her finds classifications based on "what else they are." In her eyes, fragmented comic strips and television schedules stuck to cement slabs become Rosetta stone-like artifacts, a strangely shaped tree root is transformed into a gigantic snail, and moldy books assume their own geography.

Owls Head details the twenty-year friendship that grows between Purcell and Buckminster as she excavates and catalogs the detritus that threatens to overwhelm him. Along the way, Purcell gathers prized scraps of information about Buckminster himself. From the origins of the sprawl, to his much-vaunted skills in the pool hall, to his dreams for his most precious possession, Owls Head brings Buckminster to life with a photographer's eye for detail. Part archaeology, part taxonomy, part New England yarn, and always a labor of love, Owls Head is a polished meditation on the beauty of decay, the comfort of objects, and the human quest for meaning.

Contents:

Breaking ground

Infiltration

Disintegration

Digging deeper

Transgression

Underground

Passing through

Still point

The foundry

Rag and bone shop

In the trenches

A wonderful life

Transcription

The barn.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0971454868

9780971454866

1593720335

9781593720339

OCLC:

52208674