TCPL Presents Exhibits in Avenue of the Friends during 2014

Gerry Monaghan and Eva M. Capobianco present a joint exhibit of their sculptures in the Avenue of the Friends during January and February.

Eva Capobiano has been making art for almost forty years, combining natural and human-made objects in an exploration of emotional issues dear to her heart. She presents work which is carefully and lovingly assembled, oiled and polished to bring it to life.

Gerry Monaghan presents Bowery and Basketry - Sculptural Weavings. 

Like Rumpelstiltskin, Monaghan creates objects of art by weaving together the ubiquitous and the ephemeral instead of straw. His work is sculptural basketry. Tatlin meets the Appalachian Craft tradition and beautiful organic forms take shape.
 
This exhibit will be on display in the Avenue of the Friends through March 1, 2014.  An Opening Reception will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on February 7 from 5 to 8 PM.


Why We Can't Wait: The 27th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Art and Poetry Competition Show.

Presented by the Tompkins County Office of Human Rights this show will be on display in the Avenue of the Friends February 3 through March 3.  An MLK Recognition Ceremony and Reception will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night from 5:00 to 8:00 PM on Friday February 7 in the Avenue of the Friends. 

Visual Culture - The annual Art Exhibit presented by Ithaca High School displays Ceramics during June in the exhibit cases in the Avenue of the Friends.   

Fabulous Fiber curated by Elizabeth Mount will be on display in the exhibit cases in the Avenue of the Friends July through mid-September.  An Opening Reception will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on Friday July 3.

150 Years and Counting presents an exhibit of artifacts representative of Tompkins County Life during the Civil War years and during the time our Library was founded by Ezra Cornell.  These artifacts will be on loan from the History Center.  

Also featured will be a special display on the book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  This is to mark Freedom to Read/Banned Books week.
  The display is also in conjunction with the American Library Association Traveling Exhibit Lincoln, the Constitution and the Civil War.

This exhibit will be displayed in the Avenue of the Friends.

An Opening Ceremony is planned in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on Friday October 3, and will be followed by a weekend of special programming.           

TCPL Presents an Exciting Year of Art for our Anniversary Year 2014

5 major exhibits of two dimensional will be showcased during 2014 together with exhibits in the display cases and traveling displays in the Avenue of the Friends.

For the Joy of Dancing curated by Sally Grubb presents the work of 9 artists, using a variety of different media, as they reflect on the joy of dancing. Feartured artists include Glenda Blake who presents the Unlikely Dance Project, Raymond Dalton, Karen Kucharski, Margaret Corbit, Brian Keeler, Bill Deats, Jari Poulin, Julie Prisloe and dancer/photographer Kurt Lichtmann. 

The exhibit will be on display January 10 through March 21, 2014 and the opening reception will be held first Friday, February 7, Gallery Opening Night from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.  It is made possible in part by grant support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

150 Years and Counting  - TCPL’s Sesquicentennial art exhibit celebrates 150 years of library service to the Tompkins County Community.  There are three parts to the exhibit.

Artists in the Archives is an installation of artworks that re-envision and re-purpose obsolete and/or discarded library cards and card catalogs. Three artists shared some of their delights in discoveries and priceless connections made possible in libraries.  
Carla Rae Johnson presents “The Alternet,” a 50-drawer card catalog featuring cards from more that 85 artists, poets, writers, musicians and creative thinkers.  
JoAnn Wilcox presents “Call to Everyone,” an exhibition of nearly 600 discarded library catalog cards that have been re-purposed as canvases for cell phone photos.  

Barbara Page presents “Book Marks,” a two-drawer catalog featuring library charge cards representing books that have made an impression on the artist. These card catalogs will be on display in the Avenue of the Friends.

Talk Tompkins is an audio visual exhibit of photographs of, and interviews with, members of Tompkins County community created by photographer Ben Altman. The photographs will be displayed throughout the library and the interviews will be presented on closed circuit TV.

Diary of a Library: A Community Card Catalog of Pictures, Memories and Stories.  

Members of the community are being asked to be a part of history and to help TCPL tell its story of 150 years of service to the community by creating library cards for this 15-drawer card catalog.  To participate in this project go to tcpl.org/150. 
This project is made possible in part by grant support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

These three exhibits which make up our Sesquicentennial Exhibit 150 Years and Counting, are curated by Barbara Page, Ben Altman and Sally Grubb.  They will be on display April 1 through June 30. 

A special Sesquicentennial Celebration will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on Friday April 4, 2014 from 5:00 – 8:00 PM. For more information about the Sesquicentennial Celebration go to tcpl.org/150.

Fabulous Fiber, an exhibit of three-dimensional work curated by Elizabeth Mount, will be displayed in the exhibit cases in the Avenue of the Friends during July, August and early September.  Work will include soft sculpture, re-purposed clothing, dolls and other unusual fiber art. An Opening Reception will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on Friday July 4, 2014 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.  This exhibit is made possible in part by grant support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

Visual Culture at Ithaca High School - the Annual Student Art Exhibit sponsored by the High School Art Department will again be on display but in two locations and at two different times.  

During June, three dimensional ceramics will be displayed in the exhibit cases in the Avenue of the Friends.  In July and August two-dimensional work will be displayed throughout the Library.

150 Years and Counting returns with a second exhibit celebrating TCPL's 150 Anniversary in September. This exhibit will be displayed in conjunction with the traveling exhibit Lincoln the Constitution and the Civil War.

Tompkins County Then and Now is an exhibit that will feature photo collage images created by members of Harry Littell’s senior photographic class at TC3 with text provided by Cornell Humanities students.  The photo collage will show the changes that have taken place to local landscapes and buildings over the 150 years - since the time of the Civil War and the founding of the Library. Also on display will be artifacts representative of the 1860’s showing life in Tompkins County during the period of the Civil War.

This exhibit is being curated by Julee Johnson and Sally Grubb with support from the History Center.  It is made possible in part by grant support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

An opening reception will be held in conjunction with First Friday Gallery Opening Night on Friday October 3, 2014 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War will be on display in the Avenue of the Friends from September 17 through October 31, 2014. 
This exhibit was organized by the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, and the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, Chicago.

Based upon an original interactive exhibit developed by the National Constitution Center, this traveling version explores Lincoln’s struggle to resolve the basic questions that divided Americans at the most perilous moment in the nation’s history: Was the United States truly one nation, or was it a confederacy of sovereign and separate states? How could a country founded on the belief that “all men are created equal” tolerate slavery? In a national crisis, would civil liberties be secure? President Lincoln used the Constitution to confront the secession of Southern states, slavery and wartime civil liberties. Lincoln’s decisions about these three intertwined crises of war reinvented the Constitution and the promise of American life. This exhibition develops a more complete understanding of Abraham Lincoln as president and the Civil War as the nation’s gravest constitutional crisis.

The “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War” traveling exhibition is made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): great ideas brought to life. 
 

Celebrate the New Year and TCPL’s 150th Anniversary - Create a special Library Card for Diary of a Library

 TCPL is one of the oldest public libraries in the country having been

Ezra Cornell

founded 150 years ago in 1864 by Ezra Cornell. 

To celebrate our 150th anniversary we are inviting the community to participate in a special project: fill the drawers of a special card catalog with library cards created by all of us! You are invited to write/draw a card to tell your story/memory of the library – or any library.  Together these cards will become the Diary of a Library. Stop by the Welcome Desk next time you are in the Library and pick up a flyer with a blank library card.  Go to http://tcpl.org/150 for information about our Anniversary Celebrations and to find more details about Diary of a Library and download a library card template.  Send a photo of yourself in your favorite library spot, or with your favorite book, together with your comments and library story to

cardcatalog@tcpl.org and we will create a card for you. 

Do you remember what card catalogs used to look like?  This is the card catalog when TCPL was located on Cayuga Street.

Here is the card catalog we need your help filling now. Go to http://tcpl.org/150/diary-of-a-library.html for a full list of drawer topics.
 
Check out some of the cards we have received already.

We have a drawer for volunteers to fill.

Olympia McFall has been a volunteer for many years and has many stories to tell.

Local author, Anne Mazer, is a longstanding Library Lover and has contributed several cards.

Library Director Susan Currie, and Tompkins County Historian Carol Kammen contributed this card and promise to send more.


Some of our youngest patrons are sending us cards.

Send your unique card as soon as possible to TCPL Card Catalog, 101 East Green Street, Ithaca, NY 14950, or drop off at the Welcome Desk in the Library.  Diary of a Library will go on display in the Library on April 4, but cards will be accepted and added to the catalog throughout the year.


For more information email sgrubb@tcpl.org.

Books Re-Purposed and Book Covers Re-designed join “BANNED!” books at the Library’s Gallery Opening Night on Friday, January 3, 5:00 – 8:00 PM.

Two new book exhibits created by the 6th grade students at Boynton and 7th and 8th grade students at DeWitt Middle Schools provide a fascinating new presentation of books in the Teen Services Department at the Library.

Looking through the eyes of talented young artists from the classes of Caitlin Chan (Boynton) and Aubrey Hetznecker (DeWitt) the viewer is given a completely new insight into the way people view books. This exciting new exhibit perfectly complements the exhibit “BANNED!” curated by Suzanne Onodera which has been left on display especially for the January 3, Gallery Opening Night.

The sixth grade students of Boynton Middle School created new covers for favorite books.
Students read their chosen literature, identifying symbols, themes and characters that best represented the story they were to illustrate. In the classroom, a variety of media was available for them to use. Students selected materials that they were interested in exploring more deeply and independently. As a class, they discussed the connection between visual art and literature. Students researched illustrators who worked on book jackets and studied how illustration styles change.

Each new book jacket is successful because the students, responding to the art materials and story, were motivated to create a more visually compelling cover.

The seventh and eighth grade students of DeWitt Middle School created a variety of sculptural and poetic works using discarded books.

Students folded, tore, glued, collaged, cut, sculpted, and reshaped the books to create  new works of art. These artworks are as varied as the contents of the books themselves, reflecting the unique talent of each student.

After discussing ideas regarding function and form each student selected the book they wanted to rework and used their own strategy to create their altered book. Some used the content or theme of the actual text to guide their work, while others chose to base their artwork on their own interests and to use the book accordingly. Regardless, all of these works create a beautiful display of new narratives that rethink the relationship between function and form.

Gallery Night access to the Library will be through the BorgWarner Community Room door behind the TCAT bus shelter on Green Street. 
 

Ithaca Waldorf School Puppetry Exhibit Opens in Avenue of the Friends

TCPL is pleased to announce the opening of the Ithaca Waldorf School's Holiday Puppetry Exhibit in the Avenue of the Friends featuring many beautifully crafted marionettes and other puppets.

Rudolf Steiner, philosopher, educator, and founder of Waldorf education said "We must do everything in our power to help the children to develop fantasy.”  As a result Waldorf Schools around the world employ puppetry in their classrooms, to enrich and to enliven learning, particularly for their most impressionable students ages two to seven.

As young children experience the world through their senses, puppetry is a natural medium.  For their classroom “productions,” teachers bring narratives with archetypes of human beings, of fantastical creatures such as gnomes, of personifications of nature and animals, who exhibit qualities they wish to explore. Among them are courage, compassion, and perseverance in the face of adversity.  Puppet shows allow the young child to absorb the lessons being taught, from an unthreatening vantage point, as a play’s action unfolds.

Waldorf teachers have found that students’ awareness of and sympathy for others, for animals, for the natural world, and for themselves are bolstered through the use of puppetry in the classroom.  At the same time listening, observation, comprehension, and vocabulary skills are being developed.

These puppets were created by Ithaca Waldorf School teachers and others of its community. Most were created for pre-school and kindergarten programs, are handmade from felted wool and other natural materials, and tell magical folk tales in their puppet theater. 

Join Ithaca Waldorf School on December 17 in the Thaler/Howell Program Room when they present a puppet theater program of mystical folk tales.

The Ithaca Waldorf School is located at 20 Nelson Road, Ithaca, NY 14850.  For more information on Waldorf education and the Ithaca Waldorf school please contact Erin Fitzgerald, Director of School Administration, by telephone at 256-2020, by email at ithacawaldorf@gmail.com, or by visiting ithacawaldorf.org.

Behind the Lens: A Snapshot of Propaganda at the Turn of the 20th Century Opens November 8, 2013

TCPL presents a new exhibit in the Avenue of the Friends sponsored by The History Center and Ithaca Motion Picture Project with support from the Tompkins County Tourism Program, HiWay HiFi, Moving Box Studios, and Cayuga Radio Group. 
 

The exhibit Behind the Lens A Snapshot of Propaganda at the Turn of the 20th Century is a free-form installation illustrating the use of propaganda during the silent film era.

At the turn of the 20th century, radio, movies, and the printed page were the tools used to propagandize war, politics, religion, and eventually, The corporate program in America.  These tools of psychological warfare were colorful, dramatic, and often outrageous in scope and statement.  With the advent of film, mental manipulation became subtler, and thus even more insidious in nature.  In any form propaganda targets emotions more than intellect.  Nothing illustrates this better than what Americans were fed at the brink of World War I.  Whether national, or right here in Ithaca, politically correct or not, the message was always loud and clear.  Local filmmakers Theodore and Leopold Wharton wove pro-American rhetoric throughout their later films and audiences were insatiable.








Tompkins County Public Library is pleased to partner with The History Center and The Ithaca Motion Picture Project, in presenting this exhibit to the community. 



 

Craig Williams and Jon Crispin discuss Willard Suitcases, October 24, at 6 PM

On Thursday October 24, at 6:00 PM in the BorgWarner Community Room, Craig Williams, Senior Curator of History at New York State Museum and one time Director of the DeWitt Historical Society and Jon Crispin, Professional Photographer who has embarked upon a major project to photograph all the Willard Suitcases now preserved by the New York State Museum, will present a discussion of the Willard Suitcases which are the subject of the exhibit The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic.

Craig Williams will discuss finding the suitcases in the attic of one of the buildings at Willard Psychiatric Center, when he visited the facility after it closed in 1995.  Williams first tried to return the suitcases to their original owners or too their families but over 400 of them are now preserved in the State Museum.  He then worked with Darby Penney and others to create the exhibit which is now on display in the Library.  He will talk about the importance of preserving these artifacts for future generations to see and learn from. 

Jon Crispin will discuss the importance of photo documentation of this collection.  He has been a full-time, self-employed photographer since 1974, dividing his time between freelance assignments and longer-term photo documentary projects.  Crispin has been photographing at Willard for the last three decades and in 2011 was granted access to the suitcases and began to photograph them and their contents.  He has shot over eighty of the cases so far.  He received funding for this work from a successful Kickstarter campaign.  His main concern throughout his documentation has been to maintain a respect for the integrity of the residents' lives, and to tell their stories through his photos. They can be seen at his wordpress site.

This promises to be a fascinating discussion, which you will not want to miss. 

This program has been made possible by grant support from Nami-Finger Lakes, The De Luca Fund for Hope and Recovery, the Finger Lakes Independence Center and the Tompkins County Public Library program fund.