MIAMI-DADE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM

The Reading Room

A Temporary Space for Artists’ Books, Publications and Multiples

Friday, March 12, Noon - 2 p.m.

Main Library Children’s Room, 101 W. Flagler Street, Miami

305-375-5048 / [log in to unmask] / www.mdpls.org

 

With special guests:

John Bailly, artist and Fellow, Honors College at Florida International University

Gary L. Moore, artist, curator of Gullah Geechee and the 7 Dreams

Phaedra Robinson, artist (of The White Dragon at Main Library), educator, curator, organizer

Michelle Weinberg, artist, co-founder of Available Space, and Creative Director, Girls’ Club Collection

 

The alpha male star artist, the patriarchal art dealer, the heavily invested critic, can all yield in favor of a looser system with all manner of agents and marketplaces, self-distribution, creative writing on art, in short, any practical platform that enables art to flourish.

 

- Michelle Weinberg, “Women Under the Influence,” web essay from girlsclubcollection.org

 

In what I tell you, there’s the almost-true, the sometimes-true, and the half-true. That’s what telling a life is like, braiding all of that like one plaits the white Indies currant’s hair to make a hut. And the true-true comes out of that braid...

Notebook no. 1 of Marie-Sophie Laborieux. Page 3. 1965. Schoelcher Library.

-Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco

 

Not every book made by an artist is an artist's book, in spite of the old Duchampian adage that art is what an artist says it is.

 

- Johanna Drucker, “The Artist’s Book as Idea and Form,” The Century of Artist’s Books

 

On the second Friday of each month, a secret room in the Children’s Room at the Main Library becomes The Reading Room. In this cozy space, visitors can stop by any time between 12 and 2pm to get up close and personal with selections from the Library’s collection of artists’ books, publications and multiples. Experience these objects without having to look at them through a display case, engage in conversation over coffee and cookies, and see living-room style screenings of video and new media art.

 

This installment of the Reading Room features two themes. One is artists who make or keep books as part of their artmaking process: to generate ideas, explore imagery or materials, or document projects. The other is Gary L. Moore’s turn as artist-as-researcher-as-curator for his project in Main Library’s second floor exhibition space, Gullah Geechee and the 7 Dreams. John Bailly, Michelle Weinberg, and Phaedra Robinson--whose large mural piece, The White Dragon, is now up at Main Library--will be on hand to share their own artists’ “process books.” Gary L. Moore will talk about curating through the lens of an artist. He’ll also share his own curated iTunes playlist.

 

This month’s screening from Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media is Volume 10: Rural. It features nine artists (including Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir, Sam Easterson, Gwyan Rhabyt, and Jacob Galle) who challenge and investigate the real, imagined, and mediated natural world through video, new media and performance work.

For more information about exhibitions and programs at the Miami-Dade Public Library System, visit http://mdpls.org/news/exhibitions/exhibitions.asp