Borders Bookstore

It might seem strange to list a bookstore as a big influence on my directions as an artist. But, Borders was really important to my development. In the 1980s, I only lived a few blocks from Borders’ original store, in Ann Arbor. Every Saturday afternoon I would make it a point to go there to look over the latest art books and magazines. Of course, in those days one didn’t have the firehose stream of images that is available on the Internet. In that pre-internet era being able to look at new, fresh images of what artists were doing was somewhat difficult. Even if you had access to a good library, they wouldn’t really have the most recent and up-to-date things. Museums might have a few things, but they were few and far between, and they never had that many pieces by a single artist.

These days I can sit at my computer and easily see several hundred pieces by every famous artist, and dozens and dozens of images by more obscure people. One can easily look at a thousand new things an hour just on Instagram. But, in those pre-internet days, things were much harder to come across. Even if you were interested in an artist as famous as Picasso, you might only be able to see a few reproductions, a few samples, in an entire county!

But Borders changed all that! They had a large section of the newest and most deluxe art books and magazines, and one could spend an interesting hour or two learning about what was going on in the art world there. A few new books each week, and the latest magazines, made Borders an oasis in the otherwise arid plane of a midwest existence.