Bird Week: Tweet Spring! Celebrating Seattle’s Birds

The Seattle Public Library is partnering with the Seward Park Audubon Center for Bird Week, April 23-30, in celebration of the center’s tenth anniversary and the National Audubon Society’s 2018 Year of the Bird.

From the oldest of worlds into the new they flew, heralding dawn, signaling coming night, solitary, in flocks they arrived. Seed carriers, twig bearers, architects of nests.  Water gliders and earth diggers defended territory, courted, raised young, migrated, created shelter and survived. They flitted by the Xachua’bsh (hah-chu-AHBSH) (the Lake People) when the peninsula known as Seward Park was called skEba’kst, a word meaning nose in Lushootseed.

Seattle Rep’s FAMILIAR: Beyond the Theatre

Seattle Repertory Theatre presents FAMILIAR from April 27- May 27, 2018. Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this resource list of books, CDs and DVDs to enhance your experience of the show.

We know that a wedding unites more than two people. The couple are not just traveling the distance to complete their vows, their families are traveling the distance with them.  Even when language, food, culture and customs are shared, couples, still, encounter unknown and unexpected ideas and beliefs.

Click! Photography through the Lens of History

Click! A photograph is a precise record of an irretrievable instant, locked within the borders of a frame that transcends time. Did you know that the history of the camera predates the history of photography? Check out 100 Ideas that Changed Photography for more eye opening discoveries of how a room-sized device came to be held in the palm of our hands.

Once a purview of the few, cameras are, today, ubiquitous and unavoidable. A lot of thinking and experimentation went into the process of refining the photographic process. In A History of Photography in 50 Cameras you have a front row seat to technological changes that made it possible for the camera to become a necessary part and partner of memory making.

The Art of the Journey

What do January and December have in common? The letter r, as in near or at the end of a journey. From January to December of this year, we have been on an artistic journey with the year-long Begin Bold End Inspired series focusing on the creative process. Each month offered an opportunity to explore resources that assist in the growth and development of artistic skills and knowledge. We covered a lot of ground!

January
Begin Bold End Inspired
Break open this beginning like the seed that it is! A New Year’s cold, hard exterior is full of all the necessary nutrients to carry you through to a nourishing end.

E(ART)H

Humans have been making art of the earth and out of the earth for millennia. In the contemporary world these works are, variously, known as Earthworks, Land Art and Environmental Art. The inspiration found in nature is limitless. For some artists inspiration isn’t enough; they have to get their hands dirty! Stone, soil, water, sand, air and trees are just some of the materials used to re-shape the natural landscape.

You can get an introduction to the subject by viewing Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art and by reading The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson’s Earthwork through Time and Space.

Time, temperature and seasonal cycles transform earthworks revealed in Projects by Andy Goldsworthy. For Ra Paulette, caves are his canvas. Check out the film, Cave Digger. You’ll find a self-taught sculptor who transforms interiors of hillsides into sandstone sanctuaries.