Make Tracks to the Library

The 2016 Holiday Local/Focus display in the Tremont Street window of the South End library has for its theme, Making Tracks to the Library. It's another brainchild of FOSEL board member Karen Watson, who was inspired by a playful set-up of painted car tires she saw somewhere else. Barry Steinberg, of Direct Tire, graciously selected five old wheels for the project. Volunteers Liane Crawford and Maura Flaherty painted them. Thrift store finds and greens cut from backyards and fields were combined with holiday craft and culinary books from the library's collection. Gently used bows from other lives were dusted off and refashioned onto the refurbished tires.

mThe SE library's Tremont St window at night, with Will Corcoran's wire sculpture installation.

 The Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) has used the library's grand windows on Tremont Street to connect local artists, creative entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations to the South End branch. Since the beginning of 2016, the windows have  featured a range of displays reflecting the rich and varied residents and institutions in the neighborhood. They including exhibits by local wire sculptor, Will Corcoran; cheerful children's dresses inspired by nursery rhymes, hung by Caroline Leed, owner of the South End on-line enterprise Smiling Buttons; a show of bird nests by the Boston Nature Center's Mattapan bird sanctuary combined with artistic bird nests created by the children enrolled in the USES Children's Art Centre on Rutland Street; and featuring as well a talk by local birding celebrity, Ray Brown, the talk show host of Talkin' Birds in an evening talk about bird migration.,

One of the first was displays by Caroline Leed, the owner of South End's Smiling Button

Ceramic artist, Lori Pease, showed her work in the summer of 2016.

Earlier this year, the windows featured an installation about Michelle Laboy and Joshua Fiedler's award-winning LightWells now on display in Library Park, explaining the role they play in sustainable groundwater efforts. We also showcased a powerful photography exhibit of poet portraits by Greg Jundanian that was accompanied by a poetry slam event with standing-room-only crowd.

Finally, an exhibit artists' ideas based on the form of the book: ceramic book covers and books by Cambridge artist Lori Pease; folded book art by New Hampshire librarian Veronica Mueller; and, in November, a Thanksgiving window display by FOSEL board members.

If you know of someone who'd like to used the windows for a display of interest to the South End community, please contact head librarian, Anne Smart, at asmart@bpl.org or 617 536-8241.

A Thanksgiving window display by FOSEL's board members

If you know of someone who'd like to used the windows for a display of interest to the South End community, please contact head librarian, Anne Smart, at asmart@bpl.org or 617 536-8241. 

Ray Brown, "Talkin' Birds" Radio Host and NPR "Weekend Edition" Contributor, Will Present a Slide Show about Bird Migration, Thursday, September 22, at 6:30 PM, to accompany a Local/Focus Window

Poster design by Mary Owens

Next Thursday, September 22, at 6:30 PM, the South End branch will be open to host a remarkable slide show by Talkin' Birds show host, Ray Brown, whose illuminating bird commentary is a regular feature on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon on Saturday mornings. Brown, who also is a radio host on the classical music station WCRB and a well-known WGBH-TV and radio fundraiser, is a longtime South End resident. In The Magic of Migration, he will answer what he imagines may be among your birding questions: Why do birds migrate? How do they decide when — and where — to go? How do they find their way? And, is it true that one bird species has been known to fly more than 7,000 miles…non-stop? Brown will also address the many threats to birds, both during migration and on their breeding and wintering grounds, and what we can all do to help birds survive.

Urban birding display with nests made by birds and by students at the Children's Art Centre

The bird-migration slide show accompanies the Urban Birding exhibit currently on display in the Tremont Street window of the South End library, a collaboration between USES's  Children's Arts Centre on Rutland Street and Mass. Audubon's Boston Nature Center (BNC). The latest Local Focus project is the fifth one sponsored by FOSEL to showcase local artists, creative entrepreneurs and non-profits in the library's prominent window spaces. For the September exhibit, students in the CAC Vacation Arts program visited the Mattapan bird sanctuary on the former grounds of Boston State Hospital, and studied birds and the ways in which they build and maintain their nests. Inspired by their visit, the children made their own nests from natural and studio materials. Their creations, as well as nests made by actual, birds are featured in the library window.

The event is free. We serve refreshments. Seating is limited. The South End library is fully handicapped accessible. 

Mass Audubon is generously offering reduced-rate annual memberships to the South End library's patrons, which provides free access to all Mass Audubon wildlife sanctuaries and a variety of other discounts. Membership forms are available at the library.

A New Window Display Showcasing the Image of the Book in Ceramics and Folded Art Will Be Installed This Week in the Library's Tremont Street Window as Part of its "Local Focus" Initiative (Copy)

Lori Pease's earthenware book tile

Since a board member of the Friends of the South End Library discovered the potential of the South End library's beautiful large windows as a community exhibit space earlier this year, the branch has showcased a range of displays.  Coming up next is a dual display in the Tremont Street window of the image of the book itself, one by a local ceramicist who used to work in publishing; the other, the town librarian of a small public library in New Hampshire who wanted to do something more creative with the to-be-discarded books, and learned how to fold them into paper sculptures. (The local connection is that a FOSEL board member also volunteers at the NH library.)

New Hampshire librarian Veronica Mueller's folded books

Ceramic books for artful decoration, by Lori Pease

Lori Pease was for many years the design director for a local literary publishing house, Zoland Books, but has since worked with the image of the book in clay, using the book's texture, form and color as her inspiration. Pease's clay books can be hung on the wall, used as coasters or book ends, or arranged in decorative groupings. Veronica Mueller, the town librarian in Warren, NH, began to practice folding books after a seeing a picture of it on the Internet. She has given classes to adults and children, and folds books upon requests for special occasions. They make unique gifts for friends and family who want names or messages folded into the books, she explains. "The only tools required are old books without value, a pencil, a ruler, graph paper, and depending upon the design, a bone folder. There is no cutting or gluing involved," she says.

The Local Focus initiative was formerly called Window Take-over. It is meant to use the library windows as a showcase for local artists, non-profits and entrepreneurs and has to be compatible with the library's mission to serve and inform the community. All inquiries are welcome and should be directed to Anne Smart, head librarian of the branch.

The Friends of the South End Library are finalizing simple guidelines, which will be available at the library as soon as they are completed. Price lists of any items for sale are at the circulation desk. Thirty percent of Lori Pease's ceramics will be rebated to the South End library to support its programs.

Upcoming Installations Based on Library Themes

The Tremont Street windows of the South End library have provisionally become an exhibit space for local artists and other residents who are interested in showcasing their ideas by linking them to a library-related theme. The library has featured exhibits of many artists in the last few decades but the interior space is currently too crowded to do justice to  featured art work. The windows provide a unique opportunity, especially in light of the many passersby.

Courtesy: Lane Newman

The first display, by wire sculptor Will Corcoran, is based on the tales by Brothers Grimm and the Boston-born poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe, beloved by many, even though Poe, at times frustrated by local parochialism, occasionally referred to Bostonians as 'Frogpondians.' Ray Brown, known by many as the friendly face with the mellifluous voice  from WGBH-TV fundraisers and his classical music shows on WCRB radio, read a beautiful rendition of The Raven for the Window Take-over Opening on March 31st. It was matched by his telling of Poe's A Dream  Within a Dream, the Grimm Brothers' Red Riding Hood and The Old Man and his Grandson. The wire sculptures are for sale. Fifty percent of the proceeds will benefit the South End library.

Courtesy Lane Newman

The next Window Take-over may well feature a collaboration between Ray Brown's acclaimed Talkin' Birds radio show, which he also hosts, and the Children's Art Center. Initial talks are underway. You will hear the details about it here first.

For new Window Take-over proposals, please contact Anne Smart at the South End library. Email: smart@bpl.org or phone: 617-536-8241.

Will Corcoran's Wire Sculptures

take-over:poster

The initiative by the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) and South End library staff  to populate the library's prominent Tremont Street windows with installations by local artists and creative entrepreneurs will have its first showing on Thursday, March 31, with an opening at the library at 6:00 PM. The featured artist is local wire sculptor Will Corcoran who, together with FOSEL board member and Take-over visionary Karen Watson, will create a window set-up based on the tales of  Edgar Allen Poe and the Brothers Grimm. As part of the opening event, WGBH radio host and creator of the Talkin' Bird show, Ray Brown, will read from selected work of Grimm and Poe. An award will be given to the first ten children up to the age of fourteen who can correctly guess the names of all the tales represented in the windows. The answers, name and contact information of the participant should be submitted to the staff at the library in a sealed envelope by April 15, marked "South End Library Window Take-over."

Will Corcoran "tumbled into" wire sculpture a few years ago, and has participated in shows in Provincetown, Truro, and various locations in Boston, including SoWa. His work can be seen in front of his home at Pembroke Street and Warren Avenue. Ray Brown's face and mellifluous voice will be easily recognized from the many fundraising campaigns he has participated in for WGBH TV and the classical music programs he hosted on WCRB. His popular Talkin'Bird show was described by the Boston Globe as a cross between Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk. 

The Library Window Take-over project is open to all and intended to introduce the many South-enders passing by the branch on Tremont Street to the extraordinary artists, entrepreneurs, educators and cultural beacons who live here, and for them to see the library as theirs. All proposals have to be approved by FOSEL and the library staff and have to reflect a library-related theme. For further information, please contact head librarian Anne Smart at asmart@bpl.org, or call at 617 536-8241, or just stop by at the branch.

The library is fully handicapped accessible. The March 31 opening is free, and will take place from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Refreshments are served. 

Snappy Handmade Kites

The first Window Take-over by Karen Watson, Throwing caution to the Wind.

The many windows of the prominently located South End library bring light and brightness to the interior of the branch, especially important in the often gloomy winters and short days that are so typical of Boston's weather patterns. But from the outside looking in, the windows can brighten the streetscape and make that more welcoming, too, thinks Karen Watson, a recent new member of the FOSEL advisory board. Watson, a South End resident who is an interior designer by profession, is in the process of approaching a number of South End creative entrepreneurs, whose charming and unique shops often lack street visibility, and asked them to "take over" the windows for a few weeks, a few months, or a season to design inspiring installations for the library's windows based on the theme of a library. Art organizations, schools or cultural groups are being invited, too, as long as the design emphasizes the library as an important and fun neighborhood resource.

Caution to the Wind, as seen from inside the South End library looking out on Tremont Street

While details of the Library Window Take-Over are being ironed out by FOSEL, Watson has done a simple installation of hand-made kites with colorful tails made of, among other things, yellow construction tape in the huge Tremont Street window at the library, with the theme of Throwing Caution to the Wind. On display are craft books about how to make kites, a harbinger of spring. Let it inspire you: Bring your own idea for another Tremont Street window installation to the South End library's staff. They will pass the ideas on to us as long as you leave your contact information.

For further information, call Anne Smart at the South End branch at 617 536-8241, or contact FOSEL at info@southendlibrary.org or at marleen.nienhuis@verizon.net.