Art at Your Library
by Anessa Olson
You don’t have to go to a museum to see great art. In fact, you can come to the Ames Public Library. Every month the library has an art exhibit in our entryway, and sometimes additional exhibits elsewhere in the building as well.
This month, for the entire month of April, Ames Public Library is hosting two art exhibits. In the entryway, we have spectacular photographs of the night sky taken by the Ames Area Amateur Astronomers. Each image was captured by a local astrophotography enthusiast. Photographs on display will include stunning time-lapse arrays of both a solar and a lunar eclipse, as well as gorgeous images of distant galaxies and nebulae.
You can meet some of the photographers and learn to take your own images at our “Capturing the Night Sky” event April 1st at 6pm in the library auditorium. The event is open to everyone interested in getting started in this hobby and will include hands-on learning with camera equipment.
Our other art exhibit in April is the art of Jill Pelto, a Washington artist who incorporates climate science into her work. Pelto begins with a graph or chart of scientific data and then creates a painting around it that illustrates the meaning of the information. The cover of the library’s Page One newsletter this month features a piece of hers about pikas, small relatives of the rabbit that live in mountainous regions on loose rock slopes. The piece includes a map of pika habitat in Washington, and, because pikas are sensitive to heat, a graph of the average global temperature from 1990 to 2022.
You can learn more about Jill Pelto and her work at a virtual event on April 15th at 6:00pm. Pelto will join us via Zoom to discuss how she incorporates data into her paintings and to share stories about environmental changes. The exhibit and event are a part of Iowa State University Greenlee School of Journalism’s annual First Amendment Days celebration, and is supported by the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation. Some of Pelto’s work will be displayed in the library lobby, and others will be displayed upstairs near the reference desk.
Both exhibits will be on display for the entire month of April, so be sure to stop by and experience great art at your library.