Recent Books Celebrate Magnolia Branch Architect

The life and work of architect Paul Hayden Kirk, designer of The Seattle Public Library’s Magnolia Branch, is commanding renewed interest due to the publication of two new books: Paul Hayden Kirk and the Rise of the Northwest Modern by Seattle author and filmmaker Dale Kutzera, and Paul Hayden Kirk and the Puget Sound School by Grant Hildebrand, Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Washington.

Kirk was a pioneer and leading light of the distinctive Northwest modernist architectural style that flourished between the 1940s and 1970s. This style was influenced by a traditional Japanese aesthetic and emphasized simple and elegant designs that fit into the natural landscape.

Our Magnolia Branch is exemplary of this style, with its hallmark use of long beams of natural wood and large windows that fill the building with light and invite the outside in.

Yarn Is All You Need

‘Tis the season to break out your yarn stash and start making some knots! My mom taught me to crochet at a very young age, though I mainly stuck to anything square shaped like scarfs and blankets. I finally started to branch out this year, and I’m finally making a hat, which inspired me to up my crochet game — and now my husband is getting interested in knitting.

Here are a few books in our collection that have us excited to get our hooks and needles creating!

Guys Knit the Instruction Manual: for the Man With Nothing to Prove
by Nathan Taylor

If you’re going to get your person hooked on knitting, you might as well meet them where they are! And while the author admits he doesn’t speak for all men, he does know a thing or two about knitting and teaching men how to knit. Published under the Haynes Manual family, known for their more popular car manuals, this book is a great guide (and gift) for the dudes in your life!

New and Notable Northwest Nonfiction

 

Would you like to “read local” this fall? From history to art to the great outdoors, there’s something for anyone interested in exploring the Pacific Northwest through 20 nonfiction books coming out this late summer and fall.

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History buffs.
In Abandoned North Cascades, Debra Huron uncovers deserted buildings taken over by nature. Brad Holden uncovers the life of the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD” in Seattle Mystic Alfred M. Hubbard. Take a deep dive into two Seattle neighborhoods with Magnolia: Midcentury Memories, the third book from the Magnolia Historical Society, and Belltown Exposed where Staci Bernstein uncovers the storied history of the Belltown neighborhood. True crime fans will sink their teeth into Bryan Johnston’s Deep in the Woods, about the disappearance of 9-year-old George Weyerhauser in 1935.

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Art and Design lovers.
From the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) comes Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography of Innocence, highlighting the work of the Seattle-based artist as she reexamines Black portraiture; the accompanying exhibit is at SAM through January 2, 2022. Also from SAM is Frisson, featuring nineteen works of abstract expressionism recently acquired and on exhibit from October 15, 2021 to November 27, 2022. From the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds comes Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist, which explores the work of the acclaimed Japanese-born artist who made a name for himself in Seattle.

National Park Service Founders Day on August 25

This Wednesday, August 25, is National Park Service Founders Day, and while Washington doesn’t have the most (that belongs to California) we do have three amazing National Parks right at our doorstep: North Cascades National Park, Olympic National Park, and Mount Rainier National Park. The Library has a bountiful collection for all your National Park needs: art, travel guides, stories, and more! Here are a few that caught my eye!

Art & History

• The Art of the National Parks
• Ansel Adams’ Yosemite
• Leave It as It Is: a Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness by David Gessner
• That Wild Country: An Epic Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of America’s Public Lands by Mark Kenyon
• Tahoma and Its People: a Natural History of Mount Rainier National Park by Jeff Antonelis-Lapp

Maps & Travel Guides

Jacob Lawrence’s American Struggle

In March, the Seattle Art Museum will host a timely exhibition, Jacob Lawrence:  The American Struggle. Best known for his work The Migration Series, Lawrence set his sight on the American Revolution creating a series of 30 painted panels between 1954 and 1956, focusing on historical events occurring from 1775 to 1817. It is interesting to note that Lawrence developed this series during another time of struggle and strife in the country, the Civil Rights era.

The Seattle Art Museum’s show will reunite these works for the first time since 1958.

For some artists, their work is to create visual narratives. Through their work they provide their singular perspective on historical events. Such is the work of Jacob Lawrence. Lawrence brings us to key moments of a history centuries away that, yet, links to the present.

Today, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide of history sweeps over the nation. As you are well aware, we have been visited upon by multiple, simultaneous struggles that have swept us up Against Wind and Tide of forces unforeseen in our lifetime.