The Art of Libby & Katie Whipple

A paintbrush or charcoal is all they need: The Art of Libby & Katie Whipple

A colorfully autumnal visual experience awaits those who visit the Library's Mary Bishop Memorial Art Gallery during the month of September. In this Mother-Daughter Exhibit of mother Libby Whipple, an Avon, Indiana attorney, and daughter Katie Whipple, an Avon High School junior, will astound you. Their interpretive, intuitive, passionate depictions of people in charcoal and oil paint are simply amazing, as are their creators!

Having grown up around art and artists, Katie G. Whipple has been drawing and painting ever since she can remember. Fellow exhibitor and Mom, Libby Whipple, became Katie's painting teacher when Katie was very young. "Whatever Mom did", Katie says, "she did it right because I am completely hooked on art! I have found my passion and intend to integrate it into my life forever".

Katie has experimented with many different forms of art, but now focuses primarily on painting and drawing. Currently a junior at Avon High School, Katie crams as many art classes into her schedule as possible each year and tries to experience as much artistically as well. "Variety is very important", Katie says, "for it expands the inspiration base and teaches that ideas can come from anything or anywhere.

Her subject of choice, at present, is drawing or painting figures or portraits with charcoal or oil paint. She finds figures and portraits challenging and extremely fascinating at the same time. She believes she is able to express feelings and evoke emotions better through drawing and painting people than through objects.

Musicians and members of her favorite bands are often the subject of Katie's art, for their music is her inspiration. Emotions brought to the surface while listening to the beauty they create musically, inspires Katie to create that same beauty artistically in charcoal or oil paint.

Art in all forms is the focus of Katie's life. She loves to paint and hopes and plans to include art in her future, although she has no idea where she is going with it. After high school, Art School is on the agenda, anything more than that, changes weekly. With young exuberance, Katie explains how excited she is about her future and just hopes it will involve oil paint!

While growing up, Elizabeth "Libby" Givan Whipple's dad told her, "Most people can't do most things, so find what you can do and do it well." Libby took his advice and found her life's passion in her art. Thoroughly enjoying the process, she has discovered that when you love learning about something, with time, you naturally become better at it.

Libby began painting over twenty years ago while in law school. Today when people hear that she used to be an attorney, they are surprised because to them art and law seem very different. For Libby, however, the two fields share some very important similarities. Both require technical knowledge and even more importantly, the ability to communicate an idea.
With each painting Libby hopes to communicate an idea or feeling, which may be the innocence of childhood or, as evidenced by the beauty of a sunset, how magnificent our world is.

Artists who continue to inspire her include John Singer Sergeant, Cecilia Beaux, artist and philosopher Robert Henri, Alla Prima's author Richard Schmid and a young California artist, Jeremy Lipking. These artists have had a powerful impact on Libby and how she sees life. In studying their work, she is at once humbled and inspired to find her own voice, her own greatness.

In a special portrait of Katie, entitled To My Daughter, Libby tries to distill her philosophy of life and art. This painting was published in the January 2006 issue of International Artist magazine as a finalist in the magazine's portraits and figures competition. In the painting, Katie is reading a note written by her mother. The note states: "Embrace reason and all that naturally flows from it. Immerse yourself in knowledge. Believe in goodness, and allow that belief to manifest itself in action-giving back more than you take-seeking not to judge, but to understand". "The duo purpose of the painting and poem", Libby says, "is to celebrate the beauty of life and to keep on striving for her own greatness". In so doing, she hopes to inspire others to do the same and encourages all to celebrate their life and find their OWN greatness.

You will feel as though you have made new friends through art after enjoying this delightful FAMILY AFFAIR Exhibit at the CDPL Gallery. See you there!

Price increase in photocopies and fines

Effective September 1, 2007, the library will institute an increase in two areas:
Photocopies currently at $.10 per page will increase to $.15 per page.
Overdue items charged at $.05 per page will increase to $.10 per page.

Genealogy Club meeting

The Genealogy Club of Montgomery County will meet at 7:00 PM on September 11, 2007. Our presentation is "What's In a Name?" by Peggy Reen, Tippecanoe County Genealogist and DAR member. We will be in the Donnelly Room (Lower Level). The public is invited! Call (765) 362-2242 Ext 4 or Ext 118 for more information.

Genealogy Club meeting: August 14th

Genealogy Club of Montgomery County: "A Night at the Museum"
7:00 PM
August 14, 2007

Meet at 7:00 PM in the new CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY for a tour. At 7:45 pm the business meeting and refreshments will be held at the Crawfordsville District Public Library, Lower Level in Donnelly Room. Public Invited. Call: (765)-362-2242, Ext 4 for more information!

Youth Services Summer program "thanks"

The Youth Services Department at the Crawfordsville District Public Library wants to send thanks out to all who helped with the summer reading program this year. We want to thank the businesses in town that donated coupons, movie rentals, and books. Thank you to Applebee's, Dairy Queen, Family Video, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Parks & Recreation Dept. and Random House. We also send out a GREAT big thanks to the Friends of the Library for funding the program. We couldn't do this without their generosity. We want to thank the staff at the library as well. Summer is always a busy time and their help was very much appreciated. And we want to thank the parents and children for coming in throughout the summer. Without them, there would be no need for a program.

Although the summer reading program has ended, we still have a lot to offer in the Youth Services area at the library. Through August, we have story times for babies on Mondays at 11:00; toddlers on Tuesdays at 10:00; and 3, 4, and 5 year olds on Thursdays at 11:00. We also have drop-in family story time every Tuesday evening at 6:45. On Saturday, August 25th, we will have a Game Day for elementary students at 2:30. Come relax, play games, and have a snack.

We will take a break from the above story times in September. However, we will have a new program for Tweens (ages 8-12) the second Monday at 3:45 and a program for Teens the third Monday at 3:45.

In October and November we will resume story times, have Tweens and Teens, and have a special Saturday event.

Please call 362-2242 ext. 115 for more details on programming or see what's happening on the website at cdpl.lib.in.us. Again, thank you to all who had a part in the summer reading program.

August Gallery exhibits

In the Public Library's cool Mary Bishop Memorial Art Gallery, you will find two unique and unusually expressive "Eye Candy Exhibits" to challenge your mind and fill your soul with a pleasant respite from the hot and humid dog days of August.

Dancing vivaciously from the Gallery Walls is the work of Ryan Irvin in the AGILITY DOCTRINE: A Series of Collages, Drawings, Etchings, Monoprints and Paintings created during his recent seven-week educational sojourn through Europe. Colorfully sparkling from behind the glass of the Gallery's Display Cases you will find the creative reed weaving artistry of Peggy Boyd and Judy Tulley in A TISKET A TASKET: Abundant Handmade Baskets.

Artist Ryan Irvin is currently an Indiana University Associate Instructor of graphic design working toward his MFA. In preparation for this exhibit, he spent a recent European Odyssey reading, sketching, observing, and participating in great conversations with many thoughtful and interesting people. Those ideas and conversations, everything from hierarchies to impermanence, nomadic spirituality to modern consumption, and current politics to the archetypes of Carl Jung are represented in his current work.

Much of Ryan's work was done at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy, but many sketches and drawings were done in airplanes, restaurants, hotel rooms, bars, coffee shops, trains, parks and bathtubs, somewhere between Rome and London.

Ryan's exhibit title, THE AGILITY DOCTRINE, refers to a hypothetical philosophy of agility and fluidity among pre-historic humans. "With civilization comes the illusion of stability, which creates hierarchies and ultimately pathologies," Ryan says. "Religion and mysticism become coping mechanisms to find the desired stability, even if it exists only in our minds." Currently the world is experiencing a blowback from this need for stability (the antithesis of agility) in religious extremism, corruption and war. A bit of agility right now would be most welcome!

While some of the geometric design motifs in his work were inspired by Gothic Venetian architecture, many of the collage materials were found in trashcans and on the sidewalk. It is this merging of extremes that interests Ryan. A merging of chaos and control, progress and tradition, rationalism and hedonism, renaissance concepts and anti-aesthetic sensibilities, utopian optimism and end-of-the-world pessimism are the themes running through his work. Through contemplating these extremes, Ryan hopes that he and others will experience transformation, become more tolerant, and ultimately more agile.

Ryan was born in 1977 and grew up on a farm in rural Montgomery County. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in graphic design and shortly thereafter moved to Boulder, Colorado where he worked as an art director and lead designer at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. His work has been exhibited in both group and solo shows in Boulder, Fort Collins and Denver. Ryan's artwork is in permanent collections from New York to Bali. Though schooled in graphic designer, Ryan's is interested in the overlap between emotion and ambiguity in art and shares these ideas through his designs.

Much of his subject matter is drawn from specific points in contemporary culture where new and old ideologies meet. "I'm always interested in the things that individuals are working on to become better people, whether it's being a better listener or not worrying so much," Ryan says. Although there does seem to be an underlying hint of social responsibility in his work, he avoids cliche by finding a balance between chaos and compositional control. His overall aesthetic is hard to pinpoint, though his love of outsider art and children's drawings combined with his experience in effectively simple graphics creates an interesting dichotomy of organic and geometric shapes. "I'm definitely influenced by contemporary design culture as well as the current global art scene, but most of my inspiration comes from the everyday -- overheard conversations, neighborhood birds, bathtubs, found objects, cornbread and friends," says Irvin.

Ryan currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife, three cats and some rats!

For their exhibit, A TISKET, A TASKET: Abundant Handmade Baskets, weaving artists Peggy Boyd and Judy Tulley challenged themselves to experiment in areas of Basketry they had not attempted before. The results are well worth their effort.

Both of these talented women have woven baskets for over twenty years and belong to the Sugar Creek Basket Guild. After having separate businesses for years, they merged their talents and opened A Tisket, A Tasket Basket Shop on the corner of Grant and Lafayette Avenues, where they offer basket weaving classes, basket supplies, basket kits, and hand woven baskets for sale.

Peggy and Judy enjoy teaching all levels of weaving to all ages of students. Teaching and promoting basket weaving is a great part of their love of basketry. The rewards of teaching others basic information, then encouraging them to expand their own creativity is very rewarding, as is the joy of teaching children. Several of their students have received Grand Champion status at local county 4-H events and at the State Fair.

Peggy Boyd received her BS and MS elementary education degrees from Indiana University and taught a variety of grades in the public and private sectors. Her first weaving experience came when a friend invited her to a Park and Recreation Department class on weaving. She immediately became HOOKED! A few years later, after developing enough skills and confidence, she began teaching family and friends. Within a short time, she began teaching formally, creating designs for and teaching basket weaving to many diverse individuals and groups both in Indiana and neighboring states.

In 2005, Peggy was selected to receive the Indiana Arts Commission's "Artist in Residence" award. This honor afforded Peggy the opportunity to demonstrate the art of basket weaving from a historical perspective, to an audience on the grounds of the Lew Wallace Study.

In her travels across the country, Peggy enjoys collecting unique baskets and learning the history of basket weaving, most especially about those produced by Native Americans. She tries to seek out skilled local artisans, learn their materials, styles, and weaving techniques and If possible weave with them. Peggy has had the privilege of weaving sweet grass baskets in South Carolina, Nantucket baskets in Massachusetts, white oak baskets in the Ozarks, porcupine quill baskets in Michigan, Chesapeake Bay goose decoys, Alaskan antler baskets, and fishing creels in Indiana.

When Peggy began weaving baskets just for fun many years ago, she had no idea her passion would lead her into a profession which she still has fun creating and teaching about these "little works of art."

Judy Tulley's interest in weaving baskets began when she and her soon-to-be-married daughter wanted the Maid of Honor, Bridesmaids, and Flower Girl to carry baskets filled with fresh flowers and found no baskets available. After numerous shopping sprees with no tangible results, mother and daughter looked at each other and said "We can do it!" Judy bought the book How to Weave Baskets, Book One and fearlessly began. She not only successfully created the wedding baskets, but found herself absolutely HOOKED on basket weaving! The more she wove the more addicted she became. Through the years Judy has expanded her interest and skills by taking workshops by well-known teachers in many states and countries. "To be able to do something every day that you absolutely love, and to do it with a friend, well, it just doesn't get any better than that," Judy says!

Retiring in 2002 as a Loan Officer for Union Federal Savings and Loan Association, after twenty-three years of service, Judy remains active in her church and belongs to the Kentucky Basket Association, Illinois Basket Association, The Association of Basket Weavers of North Carolina, and the Association of Michigan Basket Weavers. Along with her passion for basket weaving and teaching, Judy enjoys reading, redecorating their homes and boating and water skiing in the summer. A life long resident of Montgomery County, Judy is married to Richard Tulley.

Don't wait, come into the Library and enjoy these joyful exhibits. See you there.

Written for the Journal Review By Diane Hammill, Coordinator CDPL Mary Bishop Memorial Art Gallery, who may be reached at gallery@cdpl.lib.in.us