Posts from Mulberry Street Library

Jennifer Steffey's trio of paintings, grouped together under the title of Agrivulture, will be on view at the Mulberry Street Library through August 30, 2013. An illustrator for the American Museum of Natural History, Jenn also has a wide range of independent artistic projects. Using pen and ink, watercolor, and even animation to capture her inimitable style, she is Influenced by comics and superheros, surrealism, photography, pop culture, and especially her unforgettable Murphy the dog. I spoke with Jenn about her artwork.

One of the goals of exhibiting art in our library is to highlight the talents of local community residents. Fred Gutzeit is not only a frequent library patron at the Mulberry Street Library, but a vibrant visual artist who wanted to contribute his work so that other library-goers could enjoy and contemplate art during their visits here. Fred's been making art in this neighborhood for over 40 years. Much of his work has been heralded by the press, and exhibited in galleries in SoHo and the East Village. I spoke with Fred about his work.

Are we teaching New York's teens tools for a life of crime?! Not exactly. Hackasaurus is a website that makes it easy for people to manipulate our favorite webpages while we learn about the ins and outs of HTML. A group of six teens met on a Tuesday afternoon to try out this new program and add their personal touch to the internet.

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. See below for some interesting staff picks from the past couple months, on topics both timely and timeless:

I can't say that I've always been the biggest poetry fan. But lately I've been getting into novels in verse, which have been popping up all over the YA Fiction scene for awhile now. Ellen Hopkins is the queen of this and if you've never read her work before, do yourself a favor and check out Crank as soon as possible. You will be hooked... freaked out... and hooked.

The NYC Teen Author Fest is BACK, and the Mulberry Street Library is happy to host a panel with some of your favorite authors on Monday, March 18th at 6 p.m.! The panel's title is "I'll Take You There: A Change of Scenery, A Change of Self" and will focus on characters getting pushed into new places and forced to revel their true selves. Sounds pretty great! Take a look at the authors that are stopping by!

On view now through May 28, 2013 at the Mulberry Street Library is NER BECK: An Exhibition of Photographs of Lost and Found New York City Street Art. Ner, a New York City graphic artist and designer, has had a lifelong interest in overlooked street art captured in photographs. These images are found on his daily walks in neighborhoods throughout the city. I spoke with Ner about his photography and his philosophy.

The teens at the Mulberry Street Library had a special treat at their weekly Crafternoon, a workshop with Mehndi artist Mengala Bühler-Rose of MehndiNYC!

The exhibit 'Brother, Can You Spare a Stack,' on view at the Center for Book Arts through March 30th, is a thoughtful consideration of the contemporary state of libraries by 13 socially engaged artists, librarians, and art collectives. Curated by Yulia Tikhonova, who organized the exhibition MAPnificent at the Mulberry Street Library in 2012, 'Brother, Can You Spare a Stack' breathes to life the spirit of librarianship in the 21st century. In today's challenged economy, public libraries are relied on more heavily than ever. The artists who have created the libraries for this exhibit have moved beyond the traditional four walls of the public library, and have brought collections and 

Thanks to Lifetime Arts for securing funding and inviting our library system to participate, NYPL is once again able to offer free sustained art courses, taught by professional teaching artists, for adults age 55 and over. Seventeen branch libraries have received funding that enables them to host these classes, which will take place from February-November 2013, and which cover a wide variety of arts including: painting, sculpting, collage, memoir-writing/performance, drawing, and quilt-making.

Whose art is showing now at the Mulberry Street Library? Why, This is Kozar! William Kozar's exhibit This is Kozar, Don't Hate me Because I'm Beautiful - Glitter Compound Paintings, is on view through January 2, 2013. An art opening and art giveaway will take place on Saturday December 22, 2012 from 11 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. in our Community Room.

Welcome back to Week 4 of the Reader’s Den for the book Ready Player One. I would like to thank our NYPL readers for waiting for this last installment of the October Readers Den due to Hurricane Sandy and hope that everyone enjoyed this book as much as I did. For November, the book will be the Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

Welcome back to Week 3 of the Reader’s Den for the book Ready Player One. Here are a few questions you may have thought about while reading this book. If you think of something I haven’t, please post a comment. See you next week for the wrap-up of this book.

If you haven't heard of Ernest Cline, you may have seen his 2009 movie Fanboys. Fanboys is about four Star Wars-obsessed friends who travel cross-country with their dying friend to sneak into Skywalker Ranch to see the movie Episode I: Phantom Menace before its official release. If you liked that movie you will love this book about '80s pop culture, but even if you haven't (see it! It's cute) you will still love this book.

Welcome to October’s Reader's Den! This month’s selection will be Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

In recent decades, much has been said about the demographic changes that New York City shares with the rest of the world. Yes, we are getting older!

One widespread response has been a surge of programs to promote creativity in mid- and later life. NYPL has happily participated in these efforts, especially since 2010 when we started partnering with Lifetime Arts Inc. to offer our first Creative Aging courses, which took place in six branch libraries. Each course was taught by a professional teaching artist and lasted a minimum of eight 90-minute classes so that the two goals of the project — mastery of the basics of the art, and social engagement of the participants 

Meet Bobbi Beck — our latest artist on exhibit at Mulberry Street Library through October 27. 2012. She has already exhibited at several other branches of the New York Public Library, and has always found libraries to be a welcoming refuge and source of inspiration for her work.

These drawings are autobiographical and reflect her day-to-day observations and feelings. They convey her emotional and visual renderings of humor, love, gender conflicts, marriage, family, health, joy and sorrow, anguish and global issues.

A few years ago, I put together a list of my favorite back to school books. It was a list of fun books to read after all of the mandatory summer reading that you had to do. Over the last two years, I've read some more really great books with a common theme: transformation.

It's the end of August, which means soon we'll be trading in our fluffy beach reads for heartier winter tomes. NYPL librarians have plenty of suggestions for you.