Globe and Mail Article

A Collection for the Taking

An artist eager to sever links to the past prepares to give away her treasured books

Alexandra Shimo
Globe and Mail
January 6, 2007

Artist Robin Pacific is about to give away what she has spent the past 30 years collecting. Her books – all 1,670 of them—will be available for the public to take away, free, at a downtown Toronto gallery starting tomorrow afternoon.

“My books are a portrait of my psyche,” says Ms. Pacific, 61, as she set up her art exhibition, Shelf Portrait, for tomorrow’s opening. “When I pick one up at random, a whole period of my life comes rushing back: people, places, what I was doing, who I was at that particular point of my past. Giving them away is a means of putting my consciousness out into the world, and isn’t that what all artists do, regardless of the medium?”

As a former professor of English, Canadian literature, theatre and women’s’ studies who has taught at University Toronto, York and Ryerson, Ms. Pacific’s personal library includes, fiction, critical theory, biographies, philosophy, psychology, travel and gardening.

There are rare books, including the first novels of Roch Carrier, and out-of-print books such as those by Canadian poet Elizabeth Brewster. Classics include Virgil’s Aeneid, Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Here is even some humour and chick-lit.

Shopping bags will be provided to cart the books away.

Attendees will be able to scroll through a list detailing each of the books, which spans 21 pages, each 1.2 metres squared, displayed on the gallery’s four walls. Each book bears the inscription: “This book is a gift for you from Robin Pacific”. Disposable cameras will be available so gallery-goers can take photos of the disappearing archives.

“There’s been a lot of interest by the public,” said Peter Kingstone, director of the Red Head Gallery. “Most people just can’t believe that someone would give away all their books. I know that I—and many people agree—think of my collection as a portrait of me. I can look through my collection of books and see the movement of my ideas and where I’ve gone and where I came from. The idea of divesting myself from it like Robin is doing seems to be quite radical, scary and exciting.”

Like Mr. Kingstone, Ms. Pacific believes her book collection provides a self-portrait and a connection to her own past. However, recent tragic events—the deaths of her husband three years ago, and two close fiends within the past year—have prompted her to sever that link.

“I feel weighed down by the past,” she says, standing among wooden shelves where the books are hung form their spines on string, like laundry hanging out to dry.

“I think by the time you reach my age there’s an awful lot of it. It’s a lightening and liberating feeling to let go of some of it.”

In 1992, the Toronto-based artist co-founded Art Starts, a free program for local residents to make art and theatre collaboratively.

Since opening fifteen years ago, the program, paid for by both government and private-sector sources, has taught thousands of Torontonians from very diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, she said.

In 2003, Ms. Pacific organized Uniform, an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in which the gallery’s security guards put their own work and word on display.

Ms. Pacific’s latest work is typical of her history of generous acts, according to fellow Toronto resident and close friend, Spencer Higdon.

“Her generosity is legendary, so it does not surprise me that she’s giving away her life’s collection of books,” Mr. Higdon said. “She’s always done things in a big way.”