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 ERIC CARLE MUSEUM

Artist Tom Patti and children’s book author Eric Carle had a decades long friendship. In planning the Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art in Amherst, MA, Eric envisioned the far wall of the Carle Café as a spot for a major commission of Tom’s work. TOME was born.

TOME is a programmable lighted, site-line specific sculpture of glass and metal. App. 12’ high and 20’ long, the structural glass wall conveys its message through a series of sequential sections. Upon entering the space, the viewer sees the work first as a whole, and then experiences the unfolding of individual details. Much like a picture book, the viewer can look back and forth at the glass patterns – acquiring information and remembering and associating the colored and textural surface elements. TOME represents the turning of the page and the weaving of information. Although the work does not have pages that turn like books we usually see, the glass materials relate to the visual metaphor of text. The physical presence of a book, its feeling and the process of moving through its pages or unfolding of a story, speak to our creative senses.