Crime and Fiction In or Around Boston

 FOSEL advisory board member, Nick Altschuller, has compiled a selection of mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers to get you through the dark season and into the light of spring. The  stories either take place in or around Boston or are written by people from the area. Here’s Nick’s take on it:

 The mystery genre is impossible to pin down to just the usual suspects. Even the protagonists are slippery. Detectives can be a Holmesian men of society, dressed in tweed and smelling of fine tobacco. Or they can be the exemplars of noir: hardboiled, hard-drinking and reeking of unfiltered cigarettes. Spies can come besuited at a baccarat table or bespectacled behind a desk. Heroes don’t even have to be good; they can be decidedly “anti.”

 Even narrowing the scope to Boston doesn’t limit the genre’s breadth. The writers themselves come from all walks, as former prosecutors (Margaret Mclean, Raffi Yessayan), medical examiners (Patricia Cornwell) and cops or criminals (or in the case of David Marinick, people who were both). Their stories can be suspenseful and brutal, or cozy, focusing on housework, crochet or cats (Barbara Neely). 

 The novels of Robert Parker and Tess Gerritsen have spawned television shows. The works of Dennis Lehane, Chuck Hogan and George Higgins are the basis of movies. Exhilarating tales can come in fiction (The Art Forger) and non-fiction (The Gardner Heist), even when taking place in the same peaceful setting, like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

 The genre has something for every reader. (You could say it has us all figure out.) With so much variety, the thrill lies in narrowing down which types of mysteries are for you. 

South End Visual Artist Marianne A. Kinzer

Marianne A. Kinzer is a German-born visual artist who works from her South End studio at 46 Waltham Street. She studied art at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she lived from 2000 to 2010. She spent many summers in Truro, MA, where she participated in workshops at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. She has taught art at the Oak Park Art League (near Chicago) and at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro, MA.

Her work has been shown in community centers and galleries abroad (Germany and Turkey), and in the U.S., including a solo show at the Snow Library in Orleans, MA. She had various other exhibits at the J jake Art Gallery, in the South End; the Truro Center for the Arts, in Truro, MA; the Watercolor Art Gallery in Pawtucket, RI; and at the Watson Institute in Providence, RI. Kinzer regularly participates in South End Open Studios.

While living in the Midwest, Kinzer painted prairie landscapes and wetlands and learned about their vital importance to our ecology. This shifted her focus to water itself, its pattern of flow, and its meaning for mankind. Even though she has painted the figure and landscapes throughout her career, the major focus of her work now is an investigation of humankind’s relationship to nature. “Humanity needs to remember its origin and place,” she says. “All of life is connected through the water cycle.”

The artist has specialized in watercolor as her medium. Kinzer says she creates her work to look open, abstract and pleasing, thereby inviting the viewer to reflect on the central importance of water for all of life. For additional information, please visit www.marianneakinzer.com.

Erik Grau - Visual Artist

Erik Grau, whose artwork is on exhibit inside the South End Library during November, moved to Boston a decade ago from Wisconsin to pursue a MFA in sculpture. In addition to his career as a visual artist, he works full time as a board-certified Behavior Analyst and Kindergarten Inclusion teacher at the Henry L. Higginson Inclusion School in Roxbury.

As a teacher, he found that the home environment became increasingly more important in his life. “The need for quiet stillness has motivated me to curate a home filled with objects of importance that, when viewed together, address repetition and order,” he says. His paintings focus on the positive energy associated with the crystals and minerals he collects. “They incorporate my specific interest in cats in the forms of accumulated knick-knacks and the depictions of my two companion animals,” the artist explains. 

Grau holds an MFA from Boston University and a Master’s of Education from UMass, Lowell.  His work is in the permanent collection of the Wisconsin Artists Collection in Waukesha, WI. His paintings and sculptures have been featured in a number of exhibits in the Midwest, as well as in art spaces on the East and West coasts. 

He is a member of Boston’s Musa Collective, a gallery space on Braintree Street in Allston, owned and operated by artists. Most recently, Grau was the artist-in-residence at Room83Spring in Watertown, MA. He is the President of the Board of the Piano Craft Gallery, the Tremont Street artists community located in the former Chickering Piano Factory.

Elizabeth Taylor - South End Observations

SOUTH END OBSERVATIONS

Elizabeth Taylor is a visual artist who has been living and working in the South End for the past 20 years. She received a BFA from Mass College of Art and Design and later studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) where she focused on painting and photography. She has exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), SMFA and SOWA’s Open Studios, among other locations, and worked as a visual arts educator at MFA, ICA, the Blackstone School, and at the Brookline and Susan Bailis Senior Centers.

Taylor’s work in photography and these gouache paintings (opaque watercolor) touch on themes of natural preservation in the urban landscape and beyond. The Fens, Back Bay and South End are her favorite places to draw, inspired by the diversity of its people and the beauty of its environment. She often participated as an artist-at-work during the South End Garden Tours, after which the art work was auctioned off to benefit the organization.

The spark that ignited Taylor’s passion for portraiture and art began when she was a teenager and discovered Vogue Magazine, which had big glossy photographs by artists like Irving Penn and others. They would shape her interest in portraiture, photography and still life for years to come. The photographs were taken at the 2010 Gay Pride Parade in Boston.

The sketches of flowers in the current Local/Focus exhibit date from last summer when Taylor would seek out a shady spot to paint and sketch, often on a scorching hot day with the sun beating down on the concrete of Tremont Street, and find a beautiful flower in its natural setting. “I found it intriguing to study how the flower sits on the stem, or how the stems angle to create amazing compositions,” she says.

The Ayer Mansion by Louis Comfort Tiffany

The September Local/Focus installation in the Tremont Street window of the South End library

Since 1998, Jeanne Pelletier, Esq. a longtime South End resident active in numerous local community projects, has been the Preservation Advisor to the Campaign for the Ayer Mansion, the only surviving mansion designed entirely by Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Known mostly as the creator of magnificent stained-glass windows and luminous stained-glass lamp shades, Louis Comfort Tiffany was also an amateur architect and a talented decorator who pioneered interior design as a profession. He designed five houses in New York City, none of which survive today. The Ayer Mansion, located at 395 Commonwealth Avenue on the outbound side, is the only Tiffany-designed building that remains.

The Ayer Mansion at 395 Commonwealth Avenue, the last surviving mansion designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany

 With architect A.J. Manning, Tiffany created the mansion for Frederick Ayer and his second wife, Ellen Banning Ayer. Born poor, Ayer founded a patent medicine company with his brother James, and became fantastically rich from marketing such products as Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral and Ayer’s Hair Vigor. Ellen Banning Ayer was a trained actress and socialite who likely pushed Frederick to create a home in Boston where she could be closer to the theater and social events. Built between 1899 and 1902, the Ayer Mansion was unlike the conventional brick-and-brownstone Boston townhouse or the European revival styles prevalent at that time. Tiffany created a striking white granite and limestone façade punctuated with Moorish stone mosaic panels, elaborate, stained-glass screens, massive bright copper-clad doors, and grand stone columns embedded with glass and gold foil.  The interior of the mansion builds on this palette, with lavish glass and gold mosaics and grand architectural flourishes. 

One of the Tiffany-designed windows at the Ayer mansion

Tiffany’s approach aimed to ensure that the Ayer Mansion and its nouveau-riche owners would not be overlooked. It might also have been a snub to the old Boston society the Ayer couple couldn’t join. After the Ayers’ death in 1918, the house was sold to a succession of businesses, and the Ayer Mansion’s lavish stained glass and magnificent Tiffany interior and exterior artwork began to quietly decay. In 1998, new owners, Bayridge Residence and Cultural Center, together with the Campaign for the Ayer Mansion, began to restore this hidden gem.  In 2005, the house was named a National Historic Landmark, the nation’s highest ranking for historic properties.

 The house is open for public tours and events. For more information, click here.

 Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

Union United Methodist Church

Local/Focus Puts the Spotlight on the South End's Union United Methodist Church Celebrating the 200-year Anniversary of its Congregation

The Union United Methodist Church is the oldest African-American United Methodist Congregation in New England. This year, 2018, the Congregation is celebrating its 200-year anniversary, and a distinguished history committed to Christian love, social justice and “radical hospitality,” that is, a welcoming of strangers that is deep and spiritual.

Union is located at 485 Columbus Avenue, in a magnificent Gothic Revival-style building designed by Alexander R. Estey in the 1870s. It anchors one of the South End’s most popular green spaces, Titus Sparrow Park. The park’s playground was built on land donated by Union.

The Congregation was organized in 1818 out of the Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church by Pastor Samuel Snowden, a former slave turned abolitionist. The Union story had begun earlier, in 1796, with a group of African-American believers on Beacon Hill who formed the May Street Meeting House. David Walker, who published the radical and influential anti-slavery ‘An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World’ in 1829, was a member of its congregation.

The church moved to Revere Street, a station along the famed Underground Railroad, and next to Shawmut Avenue in Roxbury in 1911, where it was known as Fourth Methodist Episcopal. That is where in 1916 the Hattie B. Cooper Center for Children first opened its doors to 69 children; it was named after the first chairperson of the Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The current Local/Focus installation features a slide show about its congregation on FOSEL's flat screen.

In 1949, Union moved to its current home on Columbus Avenue, a site previously occupied by the New England Home for Little Wanderers, a charity that cared for children orphaned and made homeless by the Civil War. On its Inaugural Day, May 18, 1949, the keynote speaker was Mary McLeod Bethune, the prominent civil rights activist and educator who was an advisor to both President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1950, Union hosted the 1950 NAACP convention that voted to pursue Brown v. Board of Education. In 1966, it showcased a performance by the legendary Duke Ellington and the Duke Ellington Sacred Jazz Orchestra during the liturgical phase of Ellington’s music. In 1968 after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Union helped create Boston’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Breakfast.  Now in its fortieth year, the annual event is the nation’s oldest continuous celebration of Dr. King’s life and attracts leaders from the business, civic and educational community state-wide.

In the 1970s, Union developed the Meth-Union Manor, a four- building affordable housing cooperative in the South End. In the 1980s and 1990s, Union was active in local and national efforts in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and for economic equality at home. In 2000, Union’s Congregation became the first historically Black church to vote to formalize what it had been for decades: a safe space for the LGBTQ community.

Gary Bailey, a FOSEL board member and a trustee of Boston’s Union United Methodist Church, in front of the UUMC installation for Local/Focus. He is holding a picture of easier congregants of Union United. Bailey is a professor of Social Work at Simmons College.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

Local/Focus Puts the Spotlight on the South End's Union United Methodist Church Celebrating the 200-year Anniversary of its Congregation

DO YOU HAVE 15 MINUTES ONCE A WEEK? South End Wire Sculptor, Will Corcoran Has Installed a New Local/Focus Display in the Library's Window

Recent studies have shown that the power of being read to at any age changes the brain’s chemistry in such a way that the power of recall is greatly enhanced. Will Corcoran can still vividly remember the books read to him by his mother for fifteen minutes, once a week, fifty years ago. Corcoran is a South End artist whose wire sculptures have been on display for years in front of his home, at the corner of Pembroke Street and Warren Avenue. All outside pieces are made of hex wire. Some art works are ‘spinners’ which literally (spin) in the breeze. Most Installs happen at noon when the collective buzz of people, nature, trucks and taxis create a breeze that bring them to life. The collective movement of the city becomes an integral part of the piece.

Sculptures are changed twice a month year-round. “Kids wait and wonder about the next install,” he says. For most interior pieces aluminum screening is used. This affords a transparent   effect by day and solid sculptures at night, “with amazing shadows,” he says.

Corcoran creates his works standing at a table in the bay window of his home overlooking Harriet Tubman Park. “The screening material is delicate to work with,” he says. “It is unforgiving and evanescent, much like the energy of the street scene below. There are patterns of light and dark that come and go and are never repeated the same way. Loud music floats up from moving cars. Motorcycles hum at the red light. There’s a dry cleaner’s, a liquor store, an ATM, a convenience store, a restaurant, a park: The buzz!”

The artist "tumbled into" wire sculpture a few years ago, and has participated in shows in Provincetown, Truro, and in various locations in Boston, including SoWa. He previously displayed his work in the Tremont Street window of the South End library in April 2016, in an exhibit inspired by the tales of Edgar Allen Poe and the Brothers Grimm. You can follow his spinners, yard mobiles, and more on Twitter (PembrokeYeah!), Instagram (will02118), or his website  www.willcorcoran.com

 “ So pick up a classic and read to someone you Love”

 Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

South End Technology Center and the Fab/Lab

THE SOUTH END TECHNOLOGY CENTER/FAB LAB is the brainchild of longtime South End community activist, Mel King. The former state legislator and mayoral candidate founded SETC in the late 1990s together with the Tent City Corporation and MIT, where King was an adjunct professor. SETC’s mission is to enable all young Bostonians to become “producers of knowledge and sharers of ideas and information.” SETC provides free or low-cost access and training in most aspects of computer-related technology with volunteer staff highly skilled in computer technology and its applications. 

Located at 395 Columbus Avenue at the corner of Yarmouth Street, SETC serves 900 children and adults each year. It offers numerous opportunities to people of all ages, including Open Access to computers and internet; Technology education; Free wireless internet service to residents; an Audio Recording studio; Information on how to use a flatbed scanner, a digital camera, and how to burn CDs and DVDs; a Youth Media Producers program; a Fab Lab Inventer Lounge stocked with laser & vinyl cutters, a milling machine, a 3D printer, a CAD embroidery machine; and free tutoring by appointment, among other services. The Center is supported by foundation grants and individual contributions. It is open to the public Monday thru Thursday, 5 PM to 8 PM; Friday 4 PM to 6 PM; and Saturday 1 PM to 4 PM.  For more information, please contact Susan Klimczak at klimczaksusan@gmail.com or by phone at  SETC at 617.578.0597 or cell 617.817.2877.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

The South End Historical Society

The South End Historical Society (SEHS) has called Chester Square home since the mid-1970s. SEHS was founded in 1966 by a group of residents concerned with preserving the unique architectural integrity of the neighborhood. As a result, SEHS filed an application to have the South End listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. As part of the application, SEHS took photographs of every existing building in the South End during that time, and these photos are now part of SEHS’s largest collection.

The City of Boston created Chester Street and Chester Square in 1850 as a grand boulevard and residential square for the South End’s fashionable upper middle-class residents. It was the widest and grandest of the neighborhood’s famed garden squares, with several walking paths and a three-tiered cast iron fountain situated in the center of the park. A 987-foot cast iron fence identical to the lotus style fence that still surrounds Beacon Hill’s Louisburg Square enclosed the park. 

In the 1950s, Boston divided Chester Park with a six-lane continuation of Massachusetts Avenue to accommodate traffic from the newly constructed Southeast Expressway. It destroyed the square, which became run down. A recent redesign of the divided park by Halverson Design Partnership encourages pedestrian traffic and created small gathering spaces. The twin fountains recall the original fountain and help buffer the sounds of traffic from Mass Ave. The park is maintained by the City of Boston and the Chester Square Area Neighborhood Association.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

Floral Design Studio, Table & Tulip

Table & Tulip, located on a charming cul-de-sac on Shawmut Avenue between Rutland and West Concord Streets, is a full-service floral design studio committed to dreaming up and executing amazing floral environments. The owners founded the studio 10 years ago in the belief that if you love your work, love your community, and pursue excellence, good things will come.

Table & Tulip offers a range of services, from personally delivered hand-held bouquets to big events and even at-home plant maintenance. They were named Best Florist by Boston Magazine's Best of Boston multiple times.

If you would like to join Table & Tulip for a workshop, grab a hand-wrapped bouquet, or simply visit their South End shop and pretend you’re in the English countryside, stop by their studio  located at 461 Shawmut Ave, one block east of the South End library. You can also reach them at 617 262-3100, or shop online at www.tableandtulip.com.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

The Community Music Center of Boston

The Community Music Center of Boston has been teaching music in the South End for more than 100 years, beginning in 1910. Through decades of growth and development, the accredited non-profit music school has fullfilled its mission to provide high-quality music education to groups and individuals of all backgrounds, abilities and different age groups,  and to transform their lives by providing equitable access to excellent music education and arts experiences. The student body is exceptionally diverse, with students ranging from five months to 88 years old.

 The  Music Center serves more than 5,500 individuals each week, and collaborates with Boston Public School system, community centers, nursing homes and hospitals. The Music Center is located on Warren Avenue in the heart of the historic South End, where it operates a lively, bustling 8,000 square foot instructional facility within the Boston Center for the Arts. We are proud to be a collaborative programming partner with the Boston Public Library’s South End branch.  It's a great place...and we hope you will get to know it and us! Our website is https://cmcb.org.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

Zeitgeist Stage Company

Zeitgeist Stage Company is an award-winning local theatre company whose artistic director, David Miller, has lived around the corner from the South End library for many years. The theatre is in its 17th season and performs at the Boston Center for the Arts on Tremont Street where it is a Resident Theater Company. Zeitgeist’s mission is to present contemporary and relevant historic plays in a mix of provocative and timely theatrical productions that reflect the drama and comedy of our lives today.

Strongly connected and committed to the neighborhood, Zeitgeist Stage is proud to have supported the South End community with free tickets to the Boston Public Schools, the AIDS Action Committee, Hostels International, and the Boston Living Center. And every Wednesday performance, tickets are “pay-what-you-can” with a $10 minimum.

Local/Focus is a program sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to connect the South End branch of the BPL with local artists, non-profit institutions and creative entrepreneurs through informative and interesting installations in the library’s Tremont Street window(s).

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.

Local Calligrapher Emily Gallardo

Emily Gallardo, a South end calligrapher with a studio on Waltham Street has installed a ten-foot scroll and a smaller sample in the Tremont Street window of the South End library honoring both the art of calligraphy and the social justice. They express the sentiments of two important Massachusetts luminaries, Transcendentalist and abolitionist Theodore Parker (1810-1860) and former Senator Edward Kennedy (1932-2009).  

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but a little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I can see I am sure it bends towards justice," says one; "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die," says the other. 

Gallardo learned calligraphy in high school, majored in graphic design in college, and worked in advertising and marketing before she struck out on her own. She has worked with clients like Neiman Marcus, Ralph Lauren, Hermes and Burberry and teaches calligraphy. In addition, she has and affinity for cross-stitch, and developed kits with samples that range from animals to historical figures. Gallardo can be reached at www.emilygallardo.com. 

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.

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.