buzz spector

JUNE 13 - JULY 12, 2026

For as long as I’ve been making art out of found printed books, I’ve been using their material detritus—torn pages, detached photo reproductions, and dust jacket elements—in collages. In the early 1980s (my first book alteration was in 1981), I crafted “Page” collages using strips of excised text. Since 1988, I’ve switched to using words and images from the dust jackets of hard cover books. Parallel series of my collages since then have made use of photos of authors, in works such as Authors: Hands to Head 2 (2015) and Authors Libraries 9 (2014), while other bodies of collage poems employ selected lines from front or back flap blurbs, or else words of praise from front covers. All my work with dust jackets makes use of their specific lamination and fibrous durability. The readers among viewers of my art can recognize from where I’ve harvested those papers by their sheen and density as well as through the posing repertoire of author photos or the narrow column width of lines of found text. 

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Buzz Spector’s art makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception. His solo museum exhibitions include Art Institute of Chicago; Huntington (WV) Museum of Art; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; Orange County Museum of Art; Saint Louis Art Museum; and many private galleries. Spector’s poetry and experimental writing has been published in journals and reviews since the 1970s, including Benzene, Café Solo, POSIT, River Styx, and WhiteWalls. His art criticism has been published in American Craft, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, and New Art Examiner, among other magazines.