Library: Theme Day, Three Days Late

Just short of a year ago, I posted about a series of art 

installations called The Public Collection.

You can read these posts here, here, and here.
They have proved to be popular, so much so that
the library is asking the public for donations of books
in order to replenish the sites' offerings.

Originally there were nine stations opened 

at various sites around the city.

Recently it was announced that a tenth

site will be added early next year

and that one of the installations at the IMA

will be moved to the 

Marion County Juvenile Center in order to

provide more books and art for the 

children at that facility.

Another in The Public Collection: Nautilus

When we become engrossed in a book, we are taken 

to another world, visiting places imagined

and real that we can build on to change our world

and to become the person we want to be.

Artist Katie Hudnall has addressed this with Nautilus,

her contribution to The Public Collection.

This bookcase, crafted from materials resourced from

Indianapolis buildings and from crates used to

transport the artwork from old Wishard Hospital

to Eskenazi Health, is meant to evoke

the image of a ship, one that travels our imagination.

This bookcase can be found in the lobby of 

the Fifth Third Bank, just south of Eskenazi Health.

In the curled part of the shell, there is a little room.

Press a button and a light comes on

to illuminate a little bookcase; it is a staircase,

rising towards the light, or books carrying one to the moon.

In itself, that is charming, lending itself

to whatever stories one may care to explore.

Topiary

Last week, while on my search for pizza, I found another 

of  The Public Collection installations.

This one, called Topiary, is by sculptor Eric Nordgulen.

He intends it as a natural outgrowth of the

surrounding garden space, one that shows reading

"as another form of growth."

The tubular steel sculpture is located just off 

Washington Street at Virginia Avenue.

These installations, meant to promote literacy and the arts,

hope to provide books to people who may have 

difficulty gaining access to reading matter.

Research has found that, while middle class households

can average thirteen books per person, folks

in less well-off households have, on average,

about "one age-appropriate book available for every

three hundred people."

The Light Turned On

Umm ... Books, and all of them about art.

 No silly magazines ("Sixty-Nine Things You 

Can Do to Get Your Man Really Hot"), 

no celebrity rumor rags, nothing about over-

commercialized sports franchises. 

Nothing. Just art books. 

A Herron student was in the stacks, looking for 

a book as I walked by. Lamps on the tables 

had been turned on, adding to the inviting 

atmosphere of the library.

In the Library

It's a quiet place,

but it speaks to me.

When I was little,

time in the library was

an adult privilege, 

one I first enjoyed

when I got my very own

library card, when 

I was five or six.

A few months ago,

I got a card for the Herron

School of Art Library.

I felt the way I did when

I got my first card.

The words and the pictures

showing the artists' 

works and their lives

are all murmuring ...

inviting me into their world,

helping me to shape my own.

And this simple arrangement 

on a side table added

to the welcome.