The Art Assignment

The Art Assignment is a weekly video series produced by PBS Digital Studios and hosted by curator Sarah Urist Green. We take you around the U.S. to meet artists and solicit assignments from them that we can all complete. Watch our videos (http://www.youtube.com/theartassignment), and then post your responses with #theartassignment.

I've been wanting to participate in The Art Assignment for a while, and while I still really want to do the first one (which involves figuring out the exact, literal middle between you and another person, and not communicating at all between deciding to meet and the date/time you have set for your meeting... oh, and one person brings lunch, the other drinks).

However, the third episode of The Art Assignment, which asked viewers to think of something that was intimate and indispensable to you, and depict it in gif format, was one that I immediately wanted to do.

Despite the immediate swirl of ideas (eyes for reading and seeing the world, my family, my friends, my home back in Canada), I kept coming back around to the same thing - books. I am currently living overseas and am thus away from the vast majority of my personal library (just ask my brother, who had to move it all for me - its not exactly a small library), but have nonetheless gathered a small, but significant collection of books in the short months since I moved to Scotland. I have an ereader, which was bought at least partially so I wouldn’t need to buy physical books while on another continent, however, there is something so immediate and comforting about physical books, and I find myself unable to stop myself from filling my surroundings with my favourite things in the world, despite the impracticality of them.

Sorry for the quality, I’ve never made a gif before, so I just used a free online tool.