Stories & Soliloquies

Stories & Soliloquies
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  • Tag: libraries

    • 30 Days of Painting, Day 24: Water Color Window

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on September 24, 2014

      This month, I’ll be doing one painting per day, every day. That’s 30 Days of Painting, and through this project I hope to become more comfortable with my paint brushes. The ultimate goal is to illustrate my stories for myself and my family.

      Day 24: Water Color Window

      For today’s project, I went back to water colors to try something fairly radical for me – an indoor space. I find artificial shapes to be far more difficult than natural ones – clean lines harder than jagged edges, and new stuff is harder than old. I like old buildings, or dilapidated potting sheds. I like trees and a ocean waves.

      So I tried the exact opposite (credit to my mom for the genius idea) – a clean marble interior space with large windows you can’t really see out. That way, the viewer can decide what s/he sees through the glass, and I don’t get to pull focus with a pretty view of nature.

      photo

      I like to imagine this as the end of the long hall library I’ll have one day. It’s the perfect space for endless books, corners for cool gadgets and art pieces, and long tables with easily accessible outlets, table lamps (those vintage looking ones with the green glass shades and the drop chain switches), and comfy chairs. And then when I need a moment to think or dream, I can run up those stairs and the stare out the window at whatever I’d like to see.

      Hey, I can dream.

      Posted in Series | 0 Comments | Tagged art, libraries, painting, water colors
    • The Last of the Great Chained Libraries

      Posted at 1:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on January 2, 2014

      How very cool is this? I love libraries, and would love love love to see a chained library some day.

      medievalfragments

      By Jenny Weston

      On a beautiful sunny day last week, the Turning Over a New Leaf project team decided to take a day off from the office to visit a spectacular chained library in the small town of Zutphen (located in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Built in 1564 as part of the church of St Walburga, it is one of only five chained libraries in the world that survive ‘intact’—that is, complete with the original books, chains, rods, and furniture.

      Needless to say, it was a rather surreal moment for all of us to step into the little room to see the dark-wood lecterns, upon which were placed (in neat rows, side-by-side) beautiful 15th- and 16th-century books, secured in place by metal chains.

      Looking closer, it is possible to see just how the chained-library system works. Each book is fitted with a metal clasp, usually on the back cover…

      View original post 522 more words

      Posted in The Waste Book | 0 Comments | Tagged books, libraries, reblog
    • Inspiring Me Today

      Posted at 8:10 am by Michelle Joelle, on October 23, 2013

      Neil Gaiman is well known to be wonderful in so many ways, something about which I’m sure no one needs convincing.  This article in The Guardian proves it once again, nevertheless.  It’s a bit long, and retreads some familiar ground on the importance of fiction and libraries and literacy, and some vague politics, but it’s got some fantastic gems:

      We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

      Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.  This has been bouncing around my head like a game of PONG.

      We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

      Go read it, then visit your local library!

      Posted in The Waste Book | 0 Comments | Tagged dreams, gaiman, libraries, links
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