Announcing PPL’s 2023 Creative Fellow

We’re so excited to announce the Library’s 2023 Creative Fellow, J.R. Uretsky. J.R. will be doing extensive Special Collections research and making new work about grief and mourning, in conversation with our spring 2023 exhibit Picturing the Pandemic.

Photo of J.R. Uretsky by Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez

J.R. Uretsky (she|they) is a Providence-based artist who weaves performance, video, puppetry, and sculpture into emotionally charged, affective artworks that shift seamlessly between autobiography and fiction. Performing under their moniker, J.R. and the Worship Band, Uretsky draws on worship practices and rituals used by western evangelical churches to create musical performances that turn trauma into strange and positive collective experiences.

You can listen to J.R. and the Worship Band at jrandtheworshipband.bandcamp.com.

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Now Accepting Applications for 2023 Creative Fellowship

We’re happy to announce that we’ve released the call for proposals for PPL’s 2023 Creative Fellowship, an eight-month fellowship for an artist to do research in our Special Collections and create new work related to the theme of our spring exhibition.

This year, we’re looking for an artist working in the field of performance to create work about grief and mourning, in conversation with our upcoming exhibit Picturing the Pandemic.

Caroline Nye, “Memorial to Jean Carlos,” Rhode Island COVID-19 Archive, https://ricovidarchive.org/items/show/1743

We’re accepting applications until the end of the business day on October 1, 2022. Details and application instructions are included in the call for proposals. Please share widely; email us if you have any questions.

Creative Fellowship Digital Reading Room

As we reshelve and return Tomboy exhibition items and wrap up the 2021-2022 Creative Fellowship, we want to take a moment to highlight Carmen Ribaudo‘s final (stunning!) fellowship creation: a digital reading room called Shape Becomes Story. The digital reading room features historic and contemporary materials from PPL’s Special Collections and from Queer.Archive.Work that served as part of Carmen’s fellowship research process, along with Carmen’s own creative work.

Created in collaboration with Kate Hao, a graduate student at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, as part of her practicum, the digital reading room is interactive and best viewed on a larger screen (so if you’re on your phone, save this one for when you’re home). If you weren’t able to make it to PPL to see Carmen’s collage movie projected on the wall of the exhibition gallery, this is your big chance to view it alongside the books, zines, comics, and illustrations that inspired it.

Bravo Carmen and Kate on a beautiful and inspiring window into the research and creative process!

Creative Fellow Artist’s Talk – May 14, 2022

We’re pleased to announce that our 2021-2022 Creative Fellow, Carmen Ribaudo, is presenting an Animated Art Talk and Digital Reading Room Release at Providence Public Library on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 3 pm.

Poster advertising Carmen Ribaudo’s artist’s talk, printed in red ink on pale yellow paper.

You can read details about the event in the calendar listing here. Capacity is limited, so register today!

Creative Fellow Carmen Ribaudo’s work on display

After many months of Special Collections research, PPL’s 2021-2022 Creative Fellow, Carmen Ribaudo, has created incredible new work as part of our current Tomboy exhibit. We’re so excited to tell you about it and invite you to view it in person at PPL!

First, you can visit PPL’s 3rd floor exhibition gallery to see Carmen’s projected collage movie, We Are Full – the colorful, cut-paper animation explores “the links between being outside, embodiment, tomboys, and queerness.” It’s projected on the wall just inside the door, leading into the full Tomboy exhibit co-curated by Kate Wells and Mary Murphy.

While you’re in the exhibit gallery viewing Carmen’s movie and taking in the Tomboy exhibit, you can also grab a free, colorful, folding comic that Carmen printed on the risograph at Binch Press, an awesome local, volunteer-run print and ceramics cooperative. (It’s also where we printed the Tomboy exhibit catalogs.)

Finally, Carmen’s giving an animated art talk and digital reading room release at the Library on Saturday, May 14, 2022 from 3:00 – 5:00 pm. Learn more and register for the event here!

Updates and a New Creative Fellow

Despite the fact that we’ve been neglecting this blog, we’ve been busy over the past months! Among other things, we’ve been launching the RI LGBTQ+ Community Archive, putting together a virtual exhibition about sleep and dreaming, and digitizing historic newspapers.

We’re also delighted to announce that we’ve selected the recipient of our 2021-2022 Creative Fellowship. Our new Creative Fellow, Carmen Ribaudo, will spend the coming months doing research in PPL’s Special Collections and creating new work related to the theme of our 2022 exhibition, tomboys.

Carmen Ribaudo works with pictures and words. With comics, painting, writing, and animation, she tells stories about characters who are in playful symbiosis with the worlds around them. She thinks about how we become what we do, how we get lost in what we create, and how worlds are built around what we pour ourselves into. She lives in Providence and is from St. Louis. View her work: www.carmenribaudo.com or on Instagram at @carmroses

CORRECTION: Creative Fellowship Call for Proposals

We have an update to our last post! We’re still accepting proposals for our 2021 Creative Fellowship…

But we’ve decided to postpone both the Fellowship and our annual Exhibition & Program Series by six months due to the coronavirus. The annual exhibition will now open on October 1, 2021 (which is 13 months away, but we’re still hard at work planning!).

The new due date for Fellowship proposals is April 1, 2021. We’ve adjusted the timeline and due dates in the call for proposals accordingly.

2021 Creative Fellowship – Call for Proposals

PPL is now accepting proposals for our 2021 Creative Fellowship! We’re looking for an artist working in illustration or two-dimensional artwork to create new work related to the theme of our 2021 exhibition, Tomboys.

View the full call for proposals, including application instructions, here. The application deadline is October 1, 2020 April 1, 2021*.

*This deadline has shifted since we originally posted this call for proposals! The 2021 Fellowship, and the Exhibition & Program Series, have both been shifted forward by six months due to the coronavirus. Updated deadlines and timeline in the call for proposals!

Update from our 2019 Creative Fellow

Today’s blog post comes from PPL’s 2019 Creative Fellow Laura Brown-Lavoie, who offers us an update on her research and an opportunity to see her perform this weekend:

“Fun fact from the special collections today: 2 out of 3 special collections librarians hate desiccated rubber bands. (‘They are like dried out noodles.’ ‘Ugh.’ ‘Me? I don’t mind them.’) Anyway this is what a rubber band looks like when you leave it in a box of papers for a long time. In other news from special collections: I’ve been studying obscenity, coal of Rhode Island, and pilgrims, and I’m performing some of the poems this Saturday with my synth at the AS220 Mainstage in downtown Providence. Details about the show below, hope you can make it!”

You are invited to attend this special music performance at AS220

on Saturday January 19

with

BUCO NERO

RACHEL BLUMBERG

J R URETSKY

LEFT HAND MAN (Laura Brown Lavoie)

9pm $6-10

Announcing Our New Online Gallery

Here in PPL’s Special Collections, we have the immense pleasure of working frequently with amazing artists and designers who use our collections for information, inspiration, and source materials. They challenge us with unusual research questions and dig into our materials in delightful, non-linear ways.

Photo of paint brush and palette from a studio visit with Keri King

Which leads to our exciting announcement: we’ve created an online gallery featuring artworks inspired by materials from our collections! Click through to see artworks, source materials, artist bios, and links to artists’ websites. (Special thanks to our Digital Content Coordinator, John Bent, for all of his hard work on this.)

We’ll be adding to the gallery in the coming months. Have you made something based on Special Collections research that you’d like to see included? Drop us a line.