Treasure hunt for hidden art at San Jose’s main library

The needle-in-a-haystack idiom has never seemed so apt (except for the time you were recklessly sewing atop a pile of hay and, well … please try to be more careful next time).

The phrase springs to mind — repeatedly — when searching for the amazing artworks of Mel Chin, scattered needle-style throughout a nine-story haystack, also known as the book stacks of San Jose’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, the city’s main public library, which also serves San Jose State University. The nearly three dozen sculptural “insertions” are all over the place, in style and location. And finding them is a fun, free, erudite expedition — ideal on a rainy afternoon for kids and adults alike.

There’s a herd of branded leather chairs on the second floor, a tiny ornate door at the base of an elevator cab, a secret-passageway bookcase that’s totally Scooby-Doo, bathroom sinks that appear to be melting and butterflies migrating up blue-sky stairwells. Some works are more noticeable than others — such as the mirrored-arched “Tower of Babel” walls and a bright-yellow Tweety Bird chair in the periodicals section. They might not strike you as “art” so much as attractive and/or quirky design elements. For others, you’ll need a map to find — and to understand — pieces such as the curlicue brass ceiling fixture tucked around a corner in the music section (turns out it’s Beethoven’s inner ear!).

Get a map

This permanent collection, titled “Recolecciones,” has been here since the building opened in 2003. Maybe everyone else in the world knew about it, but I sure didn’t. As the story goes, Chin, a renowned conceptual visual artist, was commissioned to produce one — count ’em, one — piece of public art for the spectacular new structure. Instead, he and several collaborators got carried away, as artists and collaborators tend to do, and came up with 34 of them, “to surprise you and add a sense of mystery and wonder,” his artist’s statement says. So there are no title placards on the works, no explanations. The idea is to stumble upon them, then let your curiosity do the rest.

But such stumbling could take days. Better to pick up a map at the front desk in the ground-floor central atrium. Or drop in for a docent tour, held at 11:30 a.m. every Thursday.

I missed the tour, so I ventured out on my own, starting on the lower level. (On your way down the stairwell, notice one lone butterfly on the wall. Remember that butterfly.) You might or might not spot a stout column in the middle of the room, and think it just a nice veneered support. But the cool thing is the veneer was milled from a magnificent redwood tree that once stood on this site, cut down to make way for the new building. The column begins on this subterranean level and extends up through each floor to the very top.

Back up on the ground floor, there’s a large digital counter ticking away over the checkout area, hitting 117,826,357 the day I was there. It’s a real-time record of the total number of books checked out of the library system. And, yes, it’s art. Steps away in the browsing section are walls of bookcases. But press the side of one, and — Scooby-Doo, where are you? The case spins around on an axis to reveal another set of books on the other side. And while there’s no actual secret passageway, darn it, it sure had my Nancy Drew senses tingling.

After checking the next stairwell for butterflies, try to corral some of the “Round Up” chairs on the second floor. Mixed in with similar-looking wooden chairs are 81 leather seats, each marked with a cattle brand of the original San Jose ranchos. The chairs range freely, but they may be occupied by student bodies. On this floor, there’s also an odd white-brick corner fireplace. No fire. No actual chimney. It’s meant to reference the history of book burning.

Check the next stairwell. More butterflies.

Continue the quest

King himself greets you at the top of the escalator on the third floor, though he’s tricky to find. Inside a glass case with a vase, he’s hidden in a work titled “Vessel.” It’s a 3-D version of one of those optical illusions where, if you stare at it, you start to see two faces in profile. If you gaze at this at a certain angle, King’s bold visage suddenly appears.

There’s a motion-triggered audio artwork on this floor called “Page Passage.” I admit, after walking back and forth through the stacks in vain, I had to ask a student clerk how to find it. But sure enough, in stacks 741-746, there’s a shuffling sound, when you pass through, of pages turning. “When I first started working here, I thought it was static from the intercom,” the clerk says. “But I guess it’s art.”

Through the stacks

A couple of floors up, past more butterflies and around a corner, a chunk removed from a wall reveals the “Owl of Minerva,” a reference to an observation by 19th-century idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. The stoic owl is poised to take flight over the philosophy and psychology sections. Near the geology stacks, you’ll find some oddly shaped tables. They’re the tectonic plates, of course! And in the restrooms from the third to the eighth floors, some of the stainless-steel sinks are misshapen — a comment on industrial erosion and water use.

Stairwell. More butterflies. Hundreds now of the glistening cast-metal monarchs flittering ever upward, finally escaping on their migration toward the book stacks and coming to rest on the ceiling.

The butterflies are settled, but the hunt goes on and on. I never did find the mirrors behind the books in the self-help section, allowing me to reflect on myself. Or the famously banned books buried in Plexiglass in the floors. Or the tiny door in the elevator. (Turns out I was in the wrong elevator.)

I’ll have to save those needles for another day.

Contact Angela Hill at ahill@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/GiveEmHill.