Collins Unbound

Lecture: A Mind at Work: May Morris and Subversive Stitching, September 14, 2019, 1:30-3:00pm, Collins Library Room 053 (lower level)

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

In this presentation, Dr. Wager will explore the work of May Morris (1862-1938), an accomplished designer, embroiderer, public speaker, writer, educator, advocate for social causes, and founder of the Women’s Guild of Arts. Morris’s legacy is tied to her father, William Morris, and his role as the leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Recent scholarship and exhibitions have excavated Morris’s embroidery designs, objects, writings, and her influence on artistic communities. This talk will focus on the objects of her creation, and how her works fits into a broader nineteenth-century history of stitching and revolutionary action.

Book cover for Embroidery and Lace,
May Morris, c. 1888-91

Anna Wager is the Clarence A. Davis Visual Arts Curator at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She directs the exhibition spaces on campus and manages the permanent collection. She also teaches courses related to cataloging, curatorial writing, exhibition design, and the history of museums, through the lens of 19th- and early 20th-century English and American art and material culture. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of Washington, and is a member of the William Morris Society board.

This event is sponsored by the Collins Library, the William Morris Society in the United States and Puget Sound Book Artists.

Due to limited seating, we are asking you to register for this lecture. Please click on this link and follow the registration process: https://pugetsoundbookartists.wildapricot.org/event-3503998/Registration

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Ada Hoch-Schneider Wins Library Art Award 2019

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

Each year the Collins Memorial Library sponsors an award for a graduating Art major. The monetary award is $250 and the honor of displaying their art work in a prominent spot in the library for a term of one year. The winning art work is selected from a preview of the senior show by a Library panel.

Collins Library is pleased to bestow the 2019 Senior Art Award to Ada Hoch-Schneider for her sculpture “Lobus.”

Ada’s work focuses on the importance of sustainability in design, and acknowledges everything has a monetary and environmental cost. The selection committee chose this work because of the artist’s statement regarding her thoughtful use of recycled materials and her concern about contributing to the garage on earth. Out of discarded fabrics and single use items, Ada has pieced together an object that resembles a fluffy cloud. The sculpture “Lobus” evokes a sense of lightness, reminds us of childhoods spent outdoors, and suggests a positive approach to waste use is possible. Her whimsical cloud skillfully crafted out of discarded materials invites us to look at a different end for fabric and other resource waste.

We are proud to have “Lobus” grace the Learning Commons area of the Collins Library so Ada’s artistic talents and important message can enrich our local community.

Congratulations Ada!

* * * * *

Artist Statement

I find myself unable to separate waste and my artistic practice. Waste has often been a point of contention in my work and life in general as I feel the need to know exactly how to work material, mould it, manipulate it, and struggle to justify my use of it as a resource. Unable to remove the monetary and environmental cost from my mind, room for exploration and margin of error dwindles. Every part of my work must be worth the resources and space it inhabits or else I have failed, contributing to the overflow of garbage we leave on this planet. I am invariably present in the work; my own worth invested in it, leaves me with little in the way of rational reasoning to pursue artistic expression at all.

Working with fabric waste I am able to set aside parts of my ego and my own insufficiencies. Making becomes a practice. Sewing becomes a self-examination. Through piecing together each cut edge, puckered seam and twisted contour, I test my limits of craft, colour, shape and line recovering my love for art and creation in a medium I have known so well. These leftover scraps are discarded silhouettes produced by an industry focused on the expression of self and individuality, but what it leaves behind is, in part, more informative then the products designed. The material allows me to recall my love of fashion and sewing without my practice taking a backseat to the investment of resources. The only goal being the work itself and giving three dimensional form to something that often remains invisible.

– Ada Hoch-Schneider

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Imagine seeing all the possible versions of yourself…

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. Ginny, a devoted surgeon, has a baffling vision of a beautiful co-worker in her bed and begins to doubt her marriage. Ginny’s husband, Mark, sees a vision that suggests impending devastation and grows increasingly paranoid, threatening the safety of his wife and son. Samara, a young woman desperately mourning the recent death of her mother whose father seems to be coping with ease, witnesses an apparition of her mother healthy and vibrant and wonders about the secrets her parents may have kept from her. Cass, a brilliant scholar struggling with the demands of new motherhood, catches a glimpse of herself pregnant again, just as she’s on the brink of returning to the project that could define her career. At first the visions are relatively nonthreatening, but they grow increasingly disturbing and frightening. When a natural disaster threatens, it becomes apparent that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same.

Check it out in the Popular Reading Collection!

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From the Archives & Special Collections: Pre-Graduation Reflection

Posted on April 30, 2019 by jmkyoung

The A&SC staff: Adriana Flores ’13, Archivist and Special
Collections Librarian; Mali Matthews ’22, Laura Edgar,
Assistant Archivist; Julia Masur ’19, and Laure Mounts ’20.

Hi! My name is Julia Masur and I’m the Peer Research Specialist in the Archives & Special Collections. Since I graduate in less than three weeks, I’m closing out my time in the A&SC by reflecting on my work here over the past two years.

As a history major, getting to witness firsthand the work that goes into preserving and organizing primary source documents gave me an even greater appreciation for that work. While historians and archivists engage with historical material in different ways, the work of historians would be so much more difficult without professional archivists who are dedicated to preserving history. Through my outreach to student clubs and organizations, I’ve helped the A&SC to accession materials that will hopefully help future historians and researchers learn about student life at Puget Sound.

I’ve also gotten to incorporate my work in the A&SC into my classwork. For an education studies class that I took last fall, we had to plan a lesson and teach it to the rest of the class. My partner and I decided to do our lesson on Japanese-American incarceration during World War II. Since I had just curated an exhibit for the A&SC on that subject, I knew about all the documents that we have in our collection that related to the subject. We were able to incorporate some of those documents into the lesson, which allowed us to center the lesson around the experiences of Japanese-Americans in the area, including students at Puget Sound, which made the lesson feel more relevant to the lives of those we were teaching.

On a more topical note, working in the A&SC means that I’ve learned a lot of random facts about the university that most students don’t know. For example, did you know that Puget Sound used to own a ski lodge on Mount Rainier, or that we could have been the Clamdiggers or the Sky Pilots instead of the Loggers?

Overall, working in the A&SC has been an incredibly valuable co-curricular experience for me. I’m so grateful to the rest of the A&SC staff for making this such an interesting and fun environment to learn and work in, and I’m excited to take the skills and knowledge I’ve gained here and apply it to future careers.

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Julia Masur

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An exploration of what it means to be a modern woman

Posted on April 29, 2019 by jmkyoung

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, linking two cultures and fitting neatly into either. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up with her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places, which includes several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie moves from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

Check this and more out in the Popular Reading Collection!

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From the Archives: Congratulations 2019 Puget Sound Graduates!!

Posted on April 29, 2019 by jmkyoung

Academic Procession to Memorial Fieldhouse, Class of 1949

You made it!
What an outstanding achievement! Your success is well deserved and all of your hard work certainly does not go unnoticed by your fellow Loggers. Now is the time to take all of what you’ve learned here at the University and use that knowledge to spread your wings and make your dreams a reality. You are all such unique, talented, intelligent individuals, and you have support from all of us here at Puget Sound. Good luck with all of your future endeavors as you enter the next exciting chapter of your lives. You rock Class of 2019!!
And remember… once a Logger, always a Logger! Hack hack, chop chop!

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From the Archives & Special Collections: Documenting the Student Experience at Puget Sound

Posted on April 24, 2019 by jmkyoung

It’s always a good time to donate materials to the Archives & Special Collections, but as we get to the end of the school year, we want to encourage student organizations to start going through everything they’ve produced in the past year and think about transferring documents to the A&SC. Donating items to the A&SC helps us document student life, ensures that your materials will be preserved according to professional standards, and contributes to a historical record that will be of use to students and other researchers in the years to come.

: Campus Day, 1951

: “$1200 a Year Play Program

Some examples of things to save from student organizations include meeting minutes, scrapbooks, event descriptions, budgets, event flyers, programs, and other media. We’re also interested in items that document individual students’ experiences, like diaries, journals, or correspondence from your time here; photographs of you and your classmates volunteering, engaging with the Tacoma/campus community, attending official or unofficial student events, and participating in the performing arts; or any other items that you think uniquely document your Puget Sound experience. While this list is by no means exhaustive, there are some items that we do not collect or already have in abundance, such as yearbooks, newspapers, clothing, and awards. It is important to note that once materials are transferred to the A&SC, they cannot leave the Archives, so make sure that you keep anything that you need on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in transferring materials to the A&SC, contact Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Adriana Flores at aflores@pugetsound.edu .

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Julia Masur

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Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret. Forever.

Posted on April 23, 2019 by jmkyoung

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation arousing fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst his small community. Bookbinding is a sacred art, Seredith informs her new apprentice, that he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. With each binding they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. But while Seredith is an artisan, there are other bookbinders, greedy and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends. Just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.