Bookmobile by artist, Tony May, at the San Jose Museum of Art

Last weekend, my husband and I visited the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, California. During our visit to the San Jose Museum of Art, we saw a bookmobile on display titled Variable Book Construction: Bookmobile (1991) by artist, Tony May. 

I learned during our visit to the San Jose Museum of Art that the books used for this mobile are encyclopedia yearbooks dating from 1961-1969!! Apparently, part of the San Jose Museum of Art use to be a public library and that the encyclopedia yearbooks used in the bookmobile span the years in which the building functioned as the first public library in San Jose. Pretty nifty factoid about the bookmobile if you ask me!

Apparently, Tony May's 'Bookmobile' actually does work! Unfortunately, no demonstration of the bookmobile was occurring the day of our visit. It would have been very interesting (not to mention really cool) to see this bookmobile in action during our visit.

I was hoping there would be a YouTube video featuring Tony May's Bookmobile in action, just so I'd have an idea of how it works. But I wasn't able to find a video featuring the Bookmobile on YouTube to share here.

So, have you seen any artwork featuring books recently?