Summer art series: Miniature libraries on view at museum

This summer, we asked museums and galleries to give us a closer look at a piece currently on exhibit. This week, The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures’ Executive Director, Lisa Hastreiter-Lamb, zeroes in on a piece in the current show, “Borrowed Time/Borrowed Books,” which features six miniature libraries created by Jill Orlov. They are constructed of steel and inspired by iconic libraries featured in the films “All the President’s Men,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Wings of Desire,” “The Time Machine,” “The Breakfast Club,” and an episode of the early “Twilight” TV show.

Artist: Jill Orlov, a Baltimore-based architect-turned-miniature-metalsmith, uses off-the-shelf steel bars, strips, and tubes which she cuts, welds, and shapes to create miniature libraries from our cultural collective memory. Her work comments on the value of reading in contemporary society.

Name of piece: “Time Enough At Last,” welded steel, stainless steel mesh, miniature books, vintage newspaper print plates, architectural salvage.

About the art: “Time Enough at Last” is Orlov’s interpretation of the pinnacle scene from the 1959 television show “Twilight Zone,” Season 1, Episode 8. The piece depicts the final scene in which the main character, Henry Bemis, a banker who had been ridiculed for his love of reading, emerges from the bank vault where he has been reading on his lunch break to find that there has been an apocalypse and he is all alone. While exploring the demolished city, he discovers the remains of the library and rejoices that he can now spend all his time reading. In his joy, he knocks his glasses off, and they shatter on the ground, leaving him devastated.

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What demands a closer look: While conducting research to create this piece, Orlov carefully studied the library depicted in this television episode. She speculated that the library was modeled after the New York Public Library. She also noticed that the upper level was an overturned arch and soon discovered the same set was used for the 1960 film “The Time Machine.”

Anything else?: “Nearly everything is made from a book or represents a book,” says the artist. “Mr. Henry Bemis lived to be engrossed in a book, figuratively, but now literally. Each of the four vault walls, made from printers’ plates, represent the body of a book without its cover. Wire is used to represent the pages. The cascading steps of the public library are exposed edges of ‘books’. The ‘pages’, made from thin steel straps, are the stair risers. Each book cover’s spine at the right side of the sculpture is an author or title referenced in this episode or in another “Twilight Zone.”

Where to see it: Through Sept. 15 at The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, 4455 E. Camp Lowell Drive. Open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $10.50, with discounts available. theminitimemachine.org. The museum will be closed Aug. 17-31.