My mother was an artist. She didn’t have a studio, so she painted at home. I assumed everyone’s house smelled like oil paint and turpentine. She took me to galleries, museums, artists’ studios; I grew up looking, even before I could read, at her art books. 

In my second year of college as an art major, a painting professor instructed us to check out 20 art books from the library each week. He didn’t mean for us to read everything; he wanted us to become visually literate about global art throughout time. Before, I’d used libraries to find what I wanted to read. This was a shift to deliberately exposing myself to the vulnerabilities of everything I didn’t know. 

Soon, by habit, I had 80 library books at home, like grad students with those tall stacks in their carrels. Once, I was talking to Çaca Yvaire, an SMFA grad student from Louisiana: he called it dream reading, when you have all the books right in front of you, and this book cites that book, and then you can pull that cited book, clarify that citation in the next. Then, maybe you request some additional things through interlibrary loan? Suddenly, you're in discourse with the authors through the ages. 

Generally, things are great. Despite the world's disarray, I get paid to work with artists every day, to buy books, journals, zines, and artists’ books by and about amazing artists. When students come for research consultations, for the hour we spend together, I get to see them as the most important artists and scholars in the world. Everything to which we have access is a resource available for them to use to succeed. I love that part of my life, madly.  

I’m slowly making art at home, just for myself, just because it feels important and healthy. That said, my real art practice is dream reading through books, at work and at home. Opening books and finding magical treasure delights me. It connects me to something akin to a collective unconscious. I can’t explain it. It’s just so much more than imaginable.  

—Darin Murphy, assistant director, W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts 

Our Tufts is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community and featured on both Tufts Now and Instagram.