by Joe Miller,
Director of Development
Greetings from Charleston.
As I write these words, I’m sitting at the desk in my hotel room, which overlooks the conjunction between the Elk and Kanawha rivers.
I’m officially here on library business. Hallie and I are visiting the capitol, where we’ll join with other librarians from around the state to meet members of the legislature and promote library funding.
My wife and I took the opportunity to enjoy a long weekend in the city. It was Caroline’s first visit and my first time back in two decades.
We’ve done our usual things in a new (or newly rediscovered) city. We spent the first day just walking around, getting a feel for the place. Days two and three involved hitting up every local bookshop, vintage store and antique mall we could find.
I can confirm that Taylor Books is every bit as great as the stories I’ve heard over the years. It was especially exciting to see several copies of the Pocahontas County Opera House Playbill sitting in the magazine stand! Scapegoat Books, in Dunbar, has one of the more eclectic collections I’ve seen in a while.
My haul included a couple of new(ish) literary magazines from small, independent publishers. I pulled a vintage ‘90s ‘zine from a bin that was mostly old shlocky horror magazines. I’m excited about a short little treatise called Literary Theory for Robots, written by a Microsoft engineer turned professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. Look for a review of that one in the coming weeks.
My coolest find is a book called TaTa Dada. I found it at a used bookstore, but this copy was still in its original plastic wrapping. The oddly named book is a literary biography of Tristan Tzara, a Romanian poet who is best known as one of the founders of Dada—an early 20th-century art movement.
Tzara is a fascinating figure. He founded the Dadaist art movement, became a radical communist during World War I, fought fascism in World War II, and became an ex-communist following Stalin’s post-war brutality, He founded Dadaism, then later became a surrealist. Later in life, he became an expert on both primitive art and medieval poetry.
Born Samuel Rosenstock in a small village at the end of the 19thC, he moved to Zurich as a young man. There he changed his name to Tristan Tzara and co-founded the Cabaret Voltaire, a club that featured live performances of poetry, music and dance.
Horrified by the chaos and slaughter of World War I, the artists and poets of Cafe Voltaire embraced nonsense, irrationality and a broadly anti-capitalist spirit in their art.
In challenging conventional notions of art, Dadaists gave us collage and found object art. You can see its descendants in the ‘90s grunge aesthetic of my youth. And you see it in things like those cool light fixtures that mash-up old industrial equipment with Edison-style LED bulbs. (We saw some especially great versions for sale at Tamarack on the drive down.)
I personally have never been very good at art. But I really love thinking and talking about it. And, of course, experiencing it.
And that brings me to an exciting announcement. We’re bringing art to the libraries!
Starting next month, local artist Vivian Blackwood will be exhibiting a selection of oil and watercolor paintings at our libraries. Her exhibition will travel to each branch, where it’ll spend a couple of weeks on display.
At each stop, we’ll have a reception where Vivian and I will discuss art, the making of art and the role of place in artmaking.
And Vivian will be teaching watercolor classes for anyone interested in learning. Thanks to a grant from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, we’re able to offer those classes—and all necessary materials—free of charge.
The first stop for the exhibit will be at McClintic Library Friday, April 11.
The opening reception is at 6 p.m., with the discussion at 7 p.m.
The class is scheduled for Tuesday, April 22, also at 6 p.m. Contact McClintic Library to reserve your spot.
Stay tuned for more details about the exhibition in the coming weeks, including dates for each of the other branches. But in the meantime, those of you who live in and around Marlinton, mark your calendars for April 11.
I look forward to seeing lots of you over the next several weeks!
