Society of Art and Crafts

The Society of Arts and Crafts, which sponsored the twelfth holiday exhibit of juried crafts by artists from all over the country at the Hynes Convention Center from December 14 to 17, has installed a Local/Focus display in the South End library's Tremont Street window featuring some of the crafts for sale at the Hynes. So you missed it this fine display of American craft works? You have another chance this coming April 20 when the Society will have another spectacular show at the Cyclorama, just down the street from the South End library, on Tremont Street. 

The Society of Arts and Crafts dates from the end of the 19th century and is America's oldest arts and craft nonprofit organization. It was located for forty years on Newbury Street but moved last year to the Seaport District. The mission of the Society has been to "develop and encourage higher artistic standards in the handcrafts." Local/Focus is a project sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect local non-profits, creative entrepreneurs and artists to the branch library with installations in its Tremont Street window.

Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library

The Tremont Street window installation of services and materials offered by the Perkins Braille and Talking Books Library  

South End branch of the Boston Public library can assist you in obtaining the many free services and materials available for free from the Perkins Braille and Talking Books Library. Located on the campus of the Perkins School for the Blind, the Perkins Library is part of the National  Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped which, in turn,is part of the Library of Congress. The Perkins Library is the main Massachusetts NLS Library. As Erin Fragola, the Outreach Coordinator for Perkins will tell you, you can have good vision but still qualify for all the Perkins library services because it is difficult for you to hold a book or because you have a medically certified reading disability, such as dyslexia, that prevents you from reading standard text.

Materials can be picked up for qualified users from the South End library or be delivered to your home. The South End branch's head librarian, Anne Smart, has application forms for anyone who would like to get the qualification process going. A wide range of free library services and materials are available for reading, playing games, playing music and other resources, such as museum passes. Each year, the Perkins Library circulates more than a half million accessible books, newspapers and publications in braille, large print and digital audio formats  to thousands of registered patrons in New England and beyond. 

The library staff has also displayed a number of items for children in the Library Park side window, including books in braille and those that explore images sensorily, by touching the pages. 

A corner of the Library Park side window includes books about blindness for children

Decoupage Artist Jenn Sherr

Jenn Sherr is known nationwide for her decoupage work which includes fanciful furnishings and jewelry, fashion accessories, boots and shoes, totes and handbags, even the occasional golf bag. Born in Worcester MA, her exploration of decoupage and faux painting began as a child, learning the art forms from her mother, who was a fashion model and artist. A Martha’s Vineyard gallery hosted an exhibition of both mother and daughter in a show called Mirror Images, illustrating how they echoed each other’s aesthetic. 

Combining decoupage with a love for fashion began when Sherr lived in Miami, where her work as a stylist for runway shows inspired her first fashion decoupage pieces. The energy and variety of styles she could explore inspired her to transform jewelry and accessories into unique works of art.

Samples of decoupage by South End  artist and teacher Jean Sherr are in view in the Tremont Street window through the middle of September 2017

In decoupage, Sherr transforms the ordinary into the unexpected. Her work is in the collection of Oprah Winfrey, and can be found in boutiques throughout New England. She was a finalist in two Red Bull National Art of Can competitions for boots and a handbag enhanced by the Red Bull can. Themes from Paris or Italy pop up in her work. Sherr teaches classes that bring the joy of decoupage to her students.  

The South End Knitters Strike Again with a Street Art Installation for June that Celebrates the Culture of Bikes, Books, Colors and Fiber in the Library’s Tremont Street Windows

The fabulous South End Knitters have installed their first exhibit in the Tremont Street windows of the South End library, a show that features a popular urban art form that counterveils the often harsh contours of our public streets’ furniture to give it a more welcoming, exciting and colorful profile. They are part of a legacy of guerilla, graffiti and stealth knitters that can be traced to Magda Sayeg, whose work with the group Knitta Please (founded in Houston in 2005) is credited with bringing sewing from the domestic circle to the street. 

Describing themselves as urban artists, the  South End Knitters’ vibrant fiber creations have beautified local fences, lamp and bicycle posts for years. The artful geometric patterns and  fiber-teased pom-poms covering the knitted bike frame in the library’s Tremont Street window combine with a quilt-shaped seat and fabric-patched bike lock, paying homage to what was generally considered a domestic form of art now claiming its rightful place in art on display in the public square.

Also known as yarn bombers, the  group participated in the deCordova Museum Biennial in 2012 for which the press release read, “When they secretly slip their colorful hand-sewn creations on fences, statues, street signs, hydrants, bicycles, and buses under cover of darkness, they humanize and prettify the urban realm; they decorate, swaddle, and in some cases, protect. They call attention to the forms they cover and remind us about our relationship to our surroundings in ways that seem far more innocuous and temporary than their painted graffiti counterparts.”

The South End Knitters are a revolving group of fiber artists of all ages, female and male, who gather in various public spaces and informal restaurants to knit, crochet and sew. Once-upon-a-time they met at Flour Bakery + Cafe on Washington Street, but more recently they have come to the Prudential Center across from the Post Office, or b.good on Dartmouth Street on Thursdays after work.  

This installation will be up for the next few weeks. It is one of a series of Tremont Street window exhibits of the Local/Focus project sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to visually connect the library community with local artists, non-profits and creative entrepreneurs.

African-American Artist, Paul Goodnight

Six striking works of figurative art by the longtime South End resident of the Piano Factory, Paul Goodnight, now grace both  of the South End library’s Tremont Street windows. Goodnight, born in Chicago but raised in Boston and Connecticut, has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He teaches at the MFA’s Museum School and received and MFA from Mass. College of Art in 1975. His work has been on displaying many places, including  the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Schomberg Institute in New York City. His paintings are included in many private collections and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institute and  Hampton University Museum.

Goodnight is currently focused on creating a large public sculpture representing the life of social reformer, abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass ,which will become the centerpiece of a to-be-renovated Frederick Douglass Square off Tremont Street in Roxbury. Due to a heavy work schedule, Goodnight was unable to give a lecture about his work while his exhibit is at the library. He promised he will do so later in the year when the Frederick Douglass project is completed.

 The work on display is for sale. A portion of any sale will be donated to benefit the South End library and its programs. For inquiries, please contact Anne Smart, head librarian, at asmart@bpl.org.

“Spot Color” Immersion Program

Posted on March 14, 2017

A Local/Focus project in the Tremont Street window has replaced  the display of  Mystery and Thriller Books with a foreign-language immersion program for young children, called Language Together. The brainchild of local resident Germaine Choe, it proposes that the Spot Color Immersion Method taps the natural inclination of children to use their “language instinct” and learn a foreign language with ease, while  having fun.

Choe started Chinese Together in 2012 as an after-school Chinese program for children aged three to eight, some classes for which took place in the South End library. The pedagogical findings from this “language lab” became the foundation for the Language Togetherapproach featured in the simply designed and colorful small books on display in the library’s Tremont Street window through March and early April. Choe, whose background is in educational publishing, developed Language Together with teachers and curriculum experts.  

She previously worked at Living Language, the foreign language division of Penguin Random House, was director of marketing for Lightbulb Press, publisher of the Wall Street Journal financial guides, and managed international distribution for Harvard Business Publishing. She lives in the South End with her husband and two children.

Local/Focus is sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library(FOSEL) to better connect the library to the South End community of artists, non-profits and creative entrepreneurs by featuring installations of their work in the library’s prominent Tremont Street windows. Since its start last year, the displays have included exhibits of handmade kites by Karen Watson (Throw Caution to the Wind); wire sculptures inspired by tales of Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe by local artist Will Corcoran; Smiling Button girls’ dresses based on those in children’s tales; sustainable groundwater efforts of Library Park’s LightWellsby Michelle Laboy; photographs of poet portraits by Greg Jundanian; bird nest sculptures by Children’s Art Centrestudents with real bird nests provided by the Mass Audubon Nature Center in Mattapan; ceramic book sculptures by Lori Pease and folded books by Veronica Mueller; and a Thanksgiving and Holiday display by FOSEL volunteers.

 bLocal/Focus installers Germaine Choe and Karen Watson in front of the Language Together exhibit

If you wish to propose an installation of your own that would be of interest to the larger South End community, please contact head librarian, Anne Smart, at asmart@bpl.org, or call 617 536-8241.

Library Park's Award-winning LightWells

The latest SE library window display, featuring an explanation of the artistic and groundwater components of Library Park's LightWells

The FOSEL initiative to use the windows of the library window as a showcase for local artists, non-profits and creative entrepreneurs currently features an illustration and explanation of the two groundwater/filtration LightWells that became part of Library Park last year. Michelle Laboy, assistant professor of architecture and urban planning at Northeastern, created the LightWell project with her associates Seth Wiseman and Joshua Fiedler. It was one of the winners of the Walsh administration’s 2014 Public Space Invitational competition.

SE library's window display at night, as seen from Tremont Street

For Laboy, a Chester Square resident, the solar-powered LightWells inspire several interpretations: as an art object, a seat, a planter, a light fixture, and a vegetated dry well for storm-water infiltration. The LightWells light up at night as a softly glowing art object with the energy collected by solar receptors installed on the library's roofs during the day. The window installation also shows an LED-lit version of the LightWells, which were enthusiastically approved for Library Park by the South End's Landmark Commission. Two weeks ago, local landscape company UrbGardens generously planted and landscaped around their two locations in the park as a gift to the library and the neighborhood. A previous, and equally generous donation of plantings and landscaping by Mahoney's Garden Center fell victim to a harsh winter followed by a summer of drought.

Since it was initiated by FOSEL board member Karen Watson, an interior designer by profession, the Window Take-over project has brightened one of the many attractive window spaces in the library's building that was originally designed in the late 1960s by the prominent architectural firm, Mitchell Giurgola. The first installation was a whimsical one of kites made of newspapers and construction tape, called Throwing Caution to the Wind. A local artist specializing in wire sculptures, Will Corcoran, took over the library windows in April and May with creations based on the tales of the Grimm Brothers and Edgar Allan Poe.

The wire sculptures were followed by a cheerful and spring-like display of summer dresses and books put together by local entrepreneur Caroline Leed. Her on-line business, Smiling Button, features girls' garb based on what is worn by characters in children's books. Leed donated a percentage of her dresses' June sales to the Reading Is Fundamental charitable foundation.

FOSEL is currently finalizing the guidelines for the project, working closely with head librarian, Anne Smart. The key element is that the exhibits are informative about the library, its mission,  and the community it serves. FOSEL board members are working on several potential installations of various themes, including the subject of urban birding, and how children acquire foreign language skills, among other things. All inquiries are most welcome and should be directed to Anne Smart at the South End library. Copies of the guidelines will be available at the circulation desk as soon as they are completed.

SE firm Smiling Button

The large windows in the South End library will soon be showcasing a local small business, Smiling Button. The shop's owner, Caroline Leed, takes children's books as the inspiration for the products she sells --young girls' dresses-- and at the same time helps support the campaign for Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation's largest children's literacy organization. Smiling Button will donate 10 percent of its June revenue to RIF.