Hammer Blog

A city’s DNA makes its way to our shelves every single day. Folks come in, deliberate and focused, bringing contributions to our holdings. Often their books are beloved, and more than once a donor has paused, and snatched the volume back as a keepsake. Others, intent upon housekeeping, bring in books that no longer fit their shelves or their lives.


Catherine accepts a copy Stephen L. Carter’s Palace Council

Motive doesn’t matter. The truth is that Libros Schmibros’ holdings reflect a transfusion of literary matter from the city of Los Angeles. Like any healthy organism, we filter out what we cannot sustain—in our instance books that don’t suit our collection—and retain what we need for our survival: good literature, art books, books in Spanish, books in Farsi, drama, countercultural mainstays, poetry, and literary non-fiction. Each book is a gift from the city to itelf, and from that cross-seeding a

We at Libros Schmibros enjoy the myth that talented folks just happen into our shop, see a task, and automatically get to work helping out in an orderly fashion. The opposite canard—that we do it all by ourselves—is just as ridiculous. The secret to Libros Schmibros’ existence is the ongoing, donated labor of 10-15 regulars who in their spare time schlep books, catalogue stock, assist patrons, and run events. Perhaps the biggest volunteers of all are the three of us who run Libros day to day: David, Catherine and myself. We’re volunteers because we’re unsalaried, and depending on what mischief we’re up to—from running major conferences to setting ourselves up in a museum somewhere in Westwood—we can each log up to 60 hours a week.

[caption id="attachment_2465" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Photo: Ann Hadlock"][/caption]


All this makes me wonder what a volunteer really is. I’m fascinated that the word has deep

This interview was conducted by electronic mail. Questions were composed by the Hammer’s new media associate Amanda Law.

For her Hammer Project, The Electric Comma (an ongoing series), LA artist Shannon Ebner investigates the correlations between photography and language. Read more in an essay by senior curator Anne Ellegood.

AL: Where does your interest in language come from?

SE: I never know how to answer this question and believe me, you are not the first person to ask it of me. All I can say is that even though I distrust language and think that there is too much of it, I also think that it can do things not just through its meaning, or variations of meaning, but also how it can exist as a sculpture, an image, and as a material.

AL: When I first saw your work; I thought of old telegrams in which the word

Our opening day at the Hammer Museum was a blast! Over two hundred visitors came through, and almost six hundred books were donated. David and I never stopped talking with patrons, while the scaffolding of work that keeps a bookstore running was heroically propped up by Hammer volunteer Tristan, and Libros Schmibros volunteers Becca Jensen and Denise Villegas. Becca and later Tristan imposed order on our storage area by starting to sift and alphabetize the newly donated books, while Denise ‘s fingers flew, entering our data more rapidly than any of us imagined possible.



Meanwhile, the museum remained gracious and hospitable hosts to our hijinks, giving us the feeling that we had passed into some perfect and parallel world where we had but to imagine and reality would follow.



–Colleen Jaurretche, co-director of Libros Schmibros

ABOUT LIBROS SCHMIBROS
The Hammer Museum’s Public Engagement program will bring an artist project

For the last several weeks, we’ve referred to the Westwood space as a nursery waiting to be filled, loving the first-born Boyle Heights store just as much as always, while also making room for its temporary sibling. Today Catherine anchored the-fifteen-foot ladder borrowed from around back, while David teetered from its rungs, all in the name of readying the flagship shop for its grand re-opening on Saturday. We did have to wonder: Just how many founders does it take to change a lightbulb?



Meanwhile, back in Westwood, Cindy bravely took scissors to her gorgeous canvas to make it fit the available space.



David, having mounted Jacob’s ladder, dreams of shelving books.



–Colleen Jaurretche, Co-Director of Libros Schmibros