Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture
The Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture (www.sbac.ca.gov) is pleased to announce the “Tiny Libraries on State” project in partnership with the City of Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Public Library, with additional funding support from Santa Barbara Beautiful, Downtown Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation. Artist Douglas Lochner has been commissioned to produce six brightly-colored, dynamic and functional public art “libraries” shaped as life-sized punctuation marks on the State Street Corridor from mid-August through mid-October 2019.
The Santa Barbara Public Library will stock the Tiny Libraries with books and contribute corresponding pop-up programming on State Street, including poetry readings, book recommendations, storytimes, and more! The books in the libraries will be free to the public to keep or borrow. The community may also leave books in the libraries to donate to other readers.
Santa Barbara Mayor Cathy Murillo shared, “These libraries will create the opportunity for people to read for pleasure. How wonderful it will be to lose yourself in a novel or pick up a book because the title or subject sparked your curiosity. I tell the students I mentor that to be a good writer, you must be a good reader. This project will connect us to information, to stories, to ourselves.”
Additional programmatic partners, including the Santa Barbara Education Foundation, will utilize the project to promote youth literacy. Artist Simon Kiefer will host pop-up interactive typewriter events and the Print Power Collective will hold print demonstrations.
Lochner, whose work has been exhibited along the Central Coast, will receive a stipend of $10,000. Lochner is known locally for his Wings of Honorproject, which is slated to debut at the Santa Barbara Airport in 2020.
Lochner’s proposal was chosen through an open submission process juried by representatives from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara; University of California, Santa Barbara; Arts Commission; Santa Barbara Public Library; Santa Barbara City College; Moxi; City Arts Advisory Committee; and The Book Den. Artists living or working in Santa Barbara, Ventura, or San Luis Obispo counties were eligible to apply for the commission.
It’s interesting to contrast Murillo’s pollyanna speeches with her petty actions on the Council. I’ll take right minded action over flowery speech any day. BTW, these books are going straight into a bum’s cart…without benches, no one is going to stop and read the Library’s cast offs.
Well, you take the books home to read. Who would be sitting on a bench long enough to read a novel?
Tiny libraries… but NO benches for people to sit on. How thoughtful.
Eight comments thus far, six of them negative. Par for edhat these days. And BTW, I think the tiny libraries are a terrific idea!
If I had the energy, I’d lug some of my 2,000 books over to donate. Great, fun idea. Reading is good.
Interesting to see how long those last.
i don’t get it…so are we that lazy now that we can’t just walk 1/2 block off of State to the actual library…so now we need mini versions on State?
994..
Your comment is also negative..
Towards this forum as well as the commenters with whom you disagree.
There’s a real double standard in the way these organisations treat art vs. regular construction projects.
If the City had to construct ONE 6ft tall metal question mark they would burn through $10,000 before the plans were approved, it would be a prevailing wage job and all of the craftsman involved would get paid, but call it an art project and they expect the artist to buy materials, provide the labor and work space to make 6 of these things under $10k. Because the artist will benefit from the “exposure”! You would think an office of arts and culture would value artists work at least as much as that of any construction worker. Enough of these bogus “art” competitions that basically ask artists to work for free.