Blog Posts by Subject: Art

At Jefferson Market Library, our 10 week drawing course for adults 55+ is drawing to a close, and we are gearing up to host an event celebrating the artists who have participated.

We will be showcasing all of the work that the students have created, on Friday May 17th from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. in our first floor auditorium. Please join us to see what has been created by the class, and have some refreshments! Additionally, we will be exhibiting some of the artwork from the course in the library's second floor reading room throughout the month of June.

Hear the audio version of this blog post. Narration: Kevin Gillins. Music performed by La Capella Reial de Catalunya; Le Concert des Nations; conductor: Jordi Savall.

I am looking at Monet's Weeping Willow series and want to describe these works to people who cannot see. I think music, with its sensual and dramatic language will most elegantly convey the power of these works.

I hope you have enjoyed reading Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Listed below are suggestions of novels, poetry and non-fiction that might also be of interest to you.

The Todt Hill-Westerleigh Library is currently displaying original art by students at Wagner High School. The artwork on display includes colorfully surrealist backgrounds, surrealist black-and-white images and black-and-white still lives. The artwork is exhibited on the Todt Hill Westerleigh Library lobby level for the public to enjoy.

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 

Welcome to the Reader's Den for March. This month we will be discussing Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. It is a novel set in Spain, written by a New York author. The novel follows Adam Gordon to Madrid in 2004 on a fellowship to write poetry influenced by the Spanish Civil War. We learn about Adam's relationships as a poet-tourist-student and his process of writing and self-discovery through experiences outside of his control.

This Friday, teaching artist Josh Millis will begin his 10 session drawing class for adults 55+ at Jefferson Market Library. (This class is full, but check out the Creative Aging classes being held at other branches.)

Below is a list of artists whose work Josh will be showing to the program's participants over the course of the sessions. Take a look at some of the artists that the class will be using as inspiration, and please join us on May 17th for a culminating gallery show!

Harper Montgomery, a writer in the Wertheim Study, has curated a fascinating exhibition at Hunter College, going until May 4. At 68th and Lexington, it is a smallish (read: do-able) delight — Open Work in Latin America, New York & Beyond: Conceptualism Reconsidered, 1967-1978.

In 1955, the artist Leon Dabo (d. 1960) donated a thin manuscript volume to The New York Public Library. Prolific during his time, Dabo is perhaps best known as a muralist and landscape painter. Dabo also spent many years in New York, and was involved with organizing the artistic community, including a part in shaping the 1913 Armory Show. Seemingly an address book, the volume Dabo donated also contains a handful of small sketches. Looked at as a whole the pages provide information about his social life and artistic process.

In the process of imaging digital material from the Timothy Leary papers, my eyes have scanned some curious documents, but sometimes the most intriguing files are the ones I can't read. Timothy Leary collaborated with a number of celebrities on projects during his years of freelancing. One of the celebrities that left his mark on the Leary papers is Keith Haring.

In the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, there is a reading room with high wooden carved ceiling called the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Reading Room. You may have seen the historical room decorated with large murals reflecting major publishers of periodicals, newspapers and books at the turn of the century by Richard Haas, an American muralist known for his architectural murals.

As the new movie Hitchcock has recently come into theaters, I am reminded of the silhouette so eloquently drawn at the beginning of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Before photography was a household staple, silhouettes provided an inexpensive way to record someone's likeness. And, as with Mr. Hitchcock, a shadow is often stunning in its ability to capture the likeness of a person or to tell a story.

Washington Square Park, Manhattan, iPad drawing ©2012 Fotis Flevotomos on Vimeo.

On October 25, 2012, we posted "Drawing on the iPad," a brief introduction to digital drawing for people with or without vision loss. The present video is an example of the playback feature of the Brushes app.

In his very first email to me, Michael Marmor, professor and past chair of ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote:
Your point that your view is original and valid on its own is important. I try to teach students that low vision or color “blindness” are not necessarily faulty vision... they are “different” vision. And may in some ways be better, or at least just as valid, depending on what you are trying to do. You have more of an “impressionist” view of a distant landscape than others with perfect vision — it's not better or worse, but alternative.

Happy Thanksgiving to you! In honor of the holiday, here's a page from one of my favorite drawing manuals in the collection, 1913's What to Draw and How to Draw It by E. G. Lutz.

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.

Miguel Trelles, one of the hands behind the scenes of Festival Borimix, is the kind of New Yorker who gives you hope.

Museums around New York City are offering visitors with low-vision or are blind the opportunity to experience and learn about great works of art. Through monthly verbal description and touch tours, visitors can enjoy a multisensory museum experience, to help compensate for some museums' "no touch" policy. Below is a select list of these tours. Advance appointments are usually required and be sure to call the museum to get updated information.

Why would someone with low vision choose to become an artist or feel passion about viewing and visiting great works of art in an art museum? As a senior librarian at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library and an artist and painter with low vision, I have found that the act of painting provides me with a great way of getting in touch with my inner self, a way of creating a sense of "mindfulness" where one can be present in the moment and reduce the feeling of stress in one's life.