Donate
  • About
  • Rent College Pads
  • Advertise
  • Privacy
Search
News
Opinions
Sports
Classifieds
Comics
BMA
Events
Subscribe

Sunday, August 7, 2022
Print Archive

Eastern Echo
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinions
  • Comics
  • Podcast
  • BMA
  • Events
  • Classifieds
  • Search
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinions
  • Comics
  • Podcast
  • BMA
  • Events
  • Classifieds
Search

Subscribe to the Echo

Donate to The Echo

You can support the Echo by donating through the EMU Foundation and selecting to apply your gift to a specific fund. Any of the funds listed below will provide support to the Echo.

01049 -- EMU Echo Editor Endowed Scholarship:  Provides financial support for the current EMU Echo Editor.

02414 -- Scott Stephenson Eastern Echo Scholarship:  This expendable scholarship is for the benefit of student(s) in the School of Communication, Media & Theater Arts in the College of Arts & Sciences.  It will be awarded to a full or part-time junior or senior EMU student majoring in journalism and working for the Eastern Echo.  The student should be working to self-finance their education and not be eligible for need-based grants.

00825 -- Student Media Development:  Provides support for the Student Media program.

Thank you for supporting the Echo and EMU Student Media.

Give Now


4/29/2016, 1:33pm

Wild Lands exhibit on display at Ypsilanti District Library

By Kelsey Hawkins-Johnson
Wild Lands exhibit on display at Ypsilanti District Library

Share

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Mail
  • Print

Nature, literature and history are what visitors to Ypsilanti’s District Library can expect when they enter into the story and art of landscape painter, Thomas Cole. In the library’s newest exhibit, Wild Lands: The Birth of American Landscape Painting, is currently on display until May 25.

An On the Road project from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ $21.1 million initiative, The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square, the exhibit was funded and awarded to the Ypsilanti Library to demonstrate the humanities in civic life. The Ypsilanti Library was one of eight Michigan organizations to receive the grant for 2016.

The NEH also funded the library with related programming such as painting classes and acrylic art classes, workshops, and land conservation-themed workshops.

The Ypsilanti Library puts on major exhibits like Wild Land each year.

"One of the great things about bringing art exhibits like this to the library is that people are coming to the library already so you don't have to go out of your way to go to an art museum or to go somewhere else," said Communication and Development Coordinator of the Ypsilanti Library, Gillian Ream Gainsley. "There's not enough value in putting art in public places and places you already are because you weren't expecting to go to an art museum today and learn something about a topic you wouldn't have known and that is the whole point of libraries. You could learn anything. You come here to learn and also come across something else that is interesting."

Thomas Cole was an English immigrant and artist who moved to America with his family in the early 19th century. He began landscape painting after moving to the Midwest frontier and being introduced to American scenery. He inspired a school of landscape painters after his success in the art of depicting American as well as European landscapes.

"When you think about a painting you think of 'I'm going to see a painting of trees and rivers' and you think of Bob Ross," said Gainsley. "The idea was that people never painted that before Thomas Cole came along. It was either pictures of people or settlements but not the wilderness. He transformed our ideas of the wilderness which spurred the conservation movement."

Organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the exhibit features different sections of the life of Thomas Cole such as his birth, voyage to America, and his time in the studio, and his legacy of the landscape art movement, Hudson River School.

It also includes a replica of the artist’s studio as well as prints of his work and hands-on interactive stations to draw and paint for creativity.

Featured stations on display was a board game that could be played by visitors in which you are "walking in the woods" and a drawing station to sketch rocks and shells.

Nature sounds were also used to immerse visitors in the wilderness that represented Thomas Cole's paintings.

"Visitors can expect to be reminded of nature, art, and poetry, said Gallery Director, Stacey Palazzolo."We get caught up in our day -to -day life and it's easy to forget about what happened in America and coming into museum setting to do that it takes you to a place you don’t know much about."

"It definitely inspires. Just taking five minutes to draw, write, or do something artistic and as somebody who wants do that on a regular basis it just feels so good and it is therapeutic," said Palazzolo.

In setting up the exhibit it took a total of about 12 hours and the work of six people. In her first time as a gallery director, Palazzolo describes her experience as fun and a bit difficult.

"There's more to putting together an exhibit than I ever realized," she said. "There are people who bring history together and find pieces and build the exhibit. It was a big puzzle piece. I always wanted to do it but I was never the person to do so."

"It's important to the community," said Palazzolo. "I think the purpose is to give library visitors a chance to experience museum quality and a museum quality experience."

"What people learn about it is an artist they didn't know about, a movement they didn't know about and a time in America they probably didn’t know about. It's about landscape painting as a theme and the focus of nature," she said.

Share



Related Stories

Courtesy of EMU file photo

EMU and Ypsilanti public safety officers hold fifth annual Bike Rodeo

By Cedrick Charles

EMU receiver Hassan Beydoun runs down the field at Rynearson Stadium on Oct. 19.

Hassan Beydoun earns Biletnikoff and Maxwell Award watch list nominations

By Christian Byers

pets-for-PALS_12295048-F056-02EF-8284B290718B6B32_1229fabd-e26d-d490-15b3b1aa96a78c0f.jpeg

Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels presents Pets for P.A.L.S to support their seniors

By Anyara Zapata


The Eastern Echo welcomes thoughtful discussion on all of our stories, but please keep comments civil and on-topic. Read our full guidelines here.


Most Popular


8/1/2022, 9:20am

Hassan Beydoun earns Biletnikoff and Maxwell Award watch list nominations

By Christian Byers / Sports Editor

Beydoun becomes the first EMU player to receive the Biletnikoff nomination pre-season accolade since Sergio Bailey in 2017.


8/1/2022, 9:18am

Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels presents Pets for P.A.L.S to support their seniors


8/3/2022, 8:00am

Review: A Day To Remember redeems themselves with new song ‘Miracle’


8/2/2022, 8:00am

EMU and Ypsilanti public safety officers hold fifth annual Bike Rodeo


Podcast


2/26/2022, 7:45pm

Podcast: February 23rd, 2022


5/14/2022, 6:20pm

Podcast: May 14th, 2022


4/22/2022, 11:14am

Podcast: April 21, 2022


4/14/2022, 9:26am

Podcast: April 14, 2022


Tweets by TheEasternEcho
Eastern Michigan Echo To Homepage
  • About
  • Jobs
  • Freelance
  • Submissions
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Distribution

All Rights Reserved

© Copyright 2022 The Eastern Echo

Powered by Solutions by The State News.