A panel of several card catalog art submissions currently featured in the exhibit.
[Ed. note: article was written by Maureen McGavin and Wade Moricle.]
LITS employees are celebrating their creativity in the symbolic act of transforming an old MARBL catalog card into a new work of art.
“It’s in the Cards” is an interactive art project, created by Julie Newton (with the help of many colleagues), that was inspired by the question, “Do you have any artistic use for these old cards?”
In the fall of 2014, Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) cleaned house in preparation for a major renovation to be completed during the 2015-2016 academic year. Among the discarded materials destined for the dumpster were several thousand outdated catalog cards, relics of an old-fashioned system for finding books.
Jack Scott’s card catalog “keyboard.”
Now, the old cards are available for Emory community members to transform into art and poetry which symbolically celebrate the role MARBL’s holdings play in the creation of scholarly and innovative works. The goal of the project is to grow from a few individual artworks into an aggregate, communal canvas.
This exhibit is in collaboration with the Creation Stories Project, sponsored in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts.
So far, there have been over 150 submissions. Of the participating artists, nearly 20 have been LITSers:
- Allison Adams
- Kim Collins (and family)
- Yolanda Cooper
- Kathy Dixson
- Anne Donlon
- Charles Forrest
- Anthony Franklin
- Ann Frellsen
- Terrence Jefferson
- Sara Logue
- Rosemary Magee
- Kristan Majors (and family)
- Pellom McDaniels, III
- Julie Newton
- Linda Nodine
- Jack Scott
- Katie Stine
- Alex Wan
- Kirsten Wehner
The team has devoted a Tumblr blog for covering the exhibit: http://emorylibrary.tumblr.com/.
The art party this spring was a big success so stay tuned for more information about the fall art party, which should happen sometime in October.