Pencil in a trip to the Vancouver Public Library central branch to check out the facility's first-ever art installation among its books. Femke van Delft raises thousands of the writing instruments to fine art in her new piece, Viewpoint Ahead: the library, which debuts tonight (February 12). Having discovered a way to sharpen pencils down so their spiralling shavings stay intact and attached, she's crafted a six-metre-long bookcase, based on the exact dimensions of the library's shelves, out of the altered writing tools; nearby sits a life-size chair and a block of concrete with more pencils poking out.

Invisible to the visitor's eye is all the research that went into the project, which van Delft has funded herself and which sits in the facility's sixth-floor fine-arts-and-music department. Van Delft told the Straight she chose one shelf in the library and counted all the books that sat on it; that's the exact number of shaved pencils--539--that she used to build her bookcase. She also got help from a librarian to study the amount of books the average avid reader will go through in their lifetime; that figure--about 3,000--represents the total number of pencils she used in the work.

The piece is meant to illustrate everything from the torturous process of capturing ideas on paper to society's obsessive need to catalogue information. Van Delft, who has been building her piece on-site, said: "One writer who came in said, 'This is writers' block and how hard it is to translate experiences onto paper.'...It's been amazing to create this piece around people who really search for meaning. People come to a library searching for meaning."

Van Delft launches Viewpoint Ahead tonight from 7 to 9 p.m.; at 7:30 she'll give an artist's talk. The installation is on view until February 29.