“Acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin reveals how the car – the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility – has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.”
Read this and more non-fiction from the Popular Reading Collection!
Photographs courtesy of Marquand Editions.
The artists’ book One Tree, by environmental scientist Gretchen C. Daily and photographer Charles J. Katz, describes how one relict tree, the Ceiba pentandra, located in the village of Sabalito, Costa Rica, carries physical and spiritual importance far out into the world. In poetic language interwoven with scientific fact, Daily describes the historical and natural history of this tree and its species. Katz’s photographs of the tree and the village of Sabalito amplify this message.
The Archives & Special Collections has many artists’ books related to environmental issues. If you are interested in seeing them, come by during our drop-in hours or schedule an appointment with us!
The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment.
By Laura Edgar, Assistant Archivist
During the month of February, in celebration of Black History Month, Collins Library will be featuring posts on some of the men celebrated in the traveling exhibition “Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth.” currently on display at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. Men of Change opened December 21, 2019 and will close March 15, 2020. The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service developed the exhibit and maintains a website with additional information on the highlighted men.
The Men of Change are arranged by seven themes: Storytellers, Myth-Breakers, Fathering, Community, Imagining, Catalysts, and Loving. Artists were invited to interpret each of the men in portraits that are as diverse as the African-Americans they represent.
(Right) Kendrick Lamar, photograph by Andrew Lih, 2018.
Myth-Breakers: Kendrick Lamar
African-American musician Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 LP Damn became the first Hip-Hop album to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Music, recognized by the awards organization as being “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” Hailing from Compton, CA, Lamar rose to mainstream prominence with his second studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which won the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2016. Damn, in addition to the Pulitzer Prize, also won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. In total, The Recording Academy has awarded Kendrick Lamar thirteen gilded gramophones. His explosive performance at the 58th Grammy Awards became one of the cultural touchstones of 2016. Lamar was also responsible for curating the soundtrack for the 2018 Marvel film, Black Panther, directed by another of the exhibition’s Myth-Breakers, Ryan Coogler.
Photograph of Kendrick Lamar by Christopher Polk. Figure in the Urban Landscape #25
(portrait of Kendrick Lamar) [Kendrick Lamar], 2018. Derrick Adams. Courtesy of the artist.
Bio and photograph from artist website;
photograph by Mark Poucher.
Portrait Artist: Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams is a Baltimore-born, Brooklyn, New York-based artist whose critically admired work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations. His multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image, and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams is also deeply immersed in questions of how African American experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism.
*Burton, Justin Adams. “ “Cheap and Easy Radicalism” The Legible Politics of Kendrick Lamar,” Posthuman Rap. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2017. Web. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190235451.001.0001/oso-9780190235451-chapter-3
*Exhibit photographs by Angela Weaver, 2020.
This book has appeared on several “best of 2019” book lists.
Author Mariko Tamaki and illustrator Rosemary Valero-O’Connell bring to life a sweet and spirited tale of young love in “Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me,” a graphic novel that asks us to consider what happens when we ditch the toxic relationships we crave to embrace the healthy ones we need.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day week with this or another entertaining book from the Popular Reading Collection!
During the month of February, in celebration of Black History Month, Collins Library will be featuring posts on some of the men celebrated in the traveling exhibition “Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth.” currently on display at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. Men of Change opened December 21, 2019 and will close March 15, 2020. The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service developed the exhibit and maintains a website with additional information on the highlighted men.
The Men of Change are arranged by seven themes: Storytellers, Myth-Breakers, Fathering, Community, Imagining, Catalysts, and Loving. Artists were invited to interpret each of the men in portraits that are as diverse as the African-Americans they represent.
Photograph of August Wilson by Adger Cowens. Lost and Found [August Wilson], 2013. Radcliffe Bailey. © Radcliffe Bailey. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Storyteller: August Wilson
August Wilson was born April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, PA and died October 2, 2005 in Seattle, WA. A celebrated playwright, he dramatized the African American experience via his ten-play cycle. Each of the works in the cycle take place in a different decade; the earliest, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is set in 1911 and the most recent, Radio Golf, the year is 1997. His plays have been both critical and box office successes, garnering Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards. Fences and The Piano Lesson were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for Drama; and Wilson is the only playwright to have won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play seven times. On October 2005, shortly after Wilson’s death, the Virginia Theatre was renamed the August Wilson Theatre, becoming the only Broadway theater to bear the name of an African American.
Photograph (left) by Jackie Cotton, 2015.
August Wilson Plays
Plays not owned by Collins Library can be borrowed from libraries in Summit.
Portrait Artist: Radcliffe Bailey
Radcliffe Bailey is a painter, sculptor, and mixed media artist who utilizes the layering of imagery, culturally resonant materials, and text to explore themes of ancestry, race, and memory. Bailey believes that by translating his personal experiences, he can achieve an understanding of, and a healing from, a universal history. His work is often created out of found materials and certain pieces from his past, including traditional African sculpture, tintypes of his family members, piano keys, and Georgia red clay.
Bio from the Jack Shainman Gallery; image from the New Gallery of Modern Art
Exhibit photographs by Angela Weaver, 2020.
In honor of Black History Month, this exhibit highlights artists’ books that focus on the African American experience. Artists’ books combine powerful narratives with visual insights, which engage the viewer and reader in new ways of seeing. All of the books on exhibit are part of our permanent collection in the Archives & Special Collections, and can be viewed individually upon request.
Join us at our Open House on Wednesday, February 26th between 3:00pm-5:00pm, which will showcase many additional archival materials that address the African American experience.
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile is published about the jefe of the newest drug cartel, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca are transformed into migrants, trying to reach el norte, But what exactly are they running to?
Find this book and more in the Popular Reading Collection!
Happy Spring Semester, Loggers! Nothing like some soggy weather to welcome you back to campus. For our new series, “Image of the Week,” we thought we’d share some photographs of Puget Sound students enjoying a January rainstorm in 1990. Here’s hoping we see the sunshine soon!
The Archives & Special Collections has drop-in hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM or is open by appointment.
By Laura Edgar, Assistant Archivist
The Behind the Archives Door Series is pleased to support Women’s History Month:
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, sewing rooms, established by President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the Works Progress Administration Women’s and Professional Projects Division became life sustaining work for women. The sewing rooms became the backbone of the division. The sewing rooms were the largest employer in the New Deal–56% of all women working for the WPA were employed in the sewing room projects. Sewing rooms were the largest non-construction project in the WPA, accounting for more than 7% of the total WPA activity. The WPA and the sewing rooms were disbanded in 1943, ending a successful and popular program that gave women not only the means to provide for themselves and their families, but also skills, camaraderie, and a sense of self worth.
Nancy’s extensive research about women and the impact of the sewing rooms has been beautifully translated to her stitched fabric book filled with embroidery floss, silk and metallic threads and vintage quilt pieces.
The Behind the Archives Door Series is pleased to support Women’s History Month:
Located in Tacoma, Washington, the Arts & Press produces outstanding letterpress, multi-color and linoleum block prints in a modern interpretation of the Arts & Crafts aesthetic. Yoshiko was a featured artist on the PBS Series Craft in America and her work is currently on display at the Collins Library as part of the exhibit: Arts & Crafts in Tacoma: Craftsmanship at Its Finest. She is the co-owner of the Press and the coauthor of several books about the Arts & Crafts Movement. Yoshiko will share insights into her process, inspiration, and her latest project, an illustrated edition of one of William Morris’s most iconic works: News from Nowhere.
Learn more by visiting: https://artsandcraftspress.com/
