By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
NEWPORT — The Library Arts Center is entering a new spring with its arts and community programs thriving, despite the many creative adjustments and reinventions taken during the last two years.
The Library Arts Center, a non-profit community arts center, gallery, and studio in Newport, was awarded a Public Value Partnership Grant, a prestigious multi-year grant from the New Hampshire State Council of the Arts, to fund community programs through fiscal year 2023.
The monetary amount of the grant was not disclosed, though the grant provides funding over two years, said Library Arts Center officials, who noted that just being chosen for this particular grant is a noteworthy honor.
“You have to be invited to apply,” said Assistant Director Fran Huot. “So we were really thrilled to have been chosen for it.”
The grant is aimed toward arts programs that emphasize community-building and create community partnerships toward larger project goals, said Executive Director Kate Luppold. The programs that receive consideration generally need to be well-established.
“It is a big deal to us to receive this,” Luppold said. “We are honored to receive the grant and to be part of the community in the state that [participates] in it.”
The Library Arts Center, attached to Newport’s Richards Free Public Library, is a separate entity that operates in partnership with the library.
The physical connection between the two programs is perhaps symbolically fitting, as public libraries and arts centers are frequently considered two of the most essential cultural community hubs.
To illustrate the Library Arts Center’s prominence as a community builder, consider the center’s two current exhibits.
One is the annual Peeps Diorama Contest, a wildly popular pop-up exhibit, with tables of gooey creative imaginings from children, families and adults using one of Easter’s most familiar marshmallow confections.
Now in its 11th year, the center’s Peeps Diorama Contest was the first of its kind in New Hampshire and receives an average of 100 entries per year.
Second is “The Heart of Newport”, a student show featuring the artwork of Newport Public School students in grades K-12, under the instruction of art teachers Colleen O’Connor, of Richards Elementary, and Debbee Skinner, of Newport Middle High School.
“I really think it’s the heart of the community,” said Laura Finke McCoy, a member of the board.
McCoy, who moved to Newport from Connecticut 12 years ago, said the Library Arts Center heavily influenced her choice of Newport as a residence.
“And now I’m part of it,” McCoy said. “I’m a board member and a professional artist, and I attend the studios. My younger daughter was very active in the art group [as a student] and displayed here, and my other daughter worked here for two years in the office. It’s very much a family-oriented place.”
The Library Arts Center was also a starting-point for Rhode Island fashion designer Kent Stetson, who once provided summer children’s workshops at the center. Stetson would become famous after an art exhibit in 2003, when frustration from not selling a single piece drove him to cut his paintings into canvas pieces and sewing them into his now-famous handbags.
Several board members praised the collaboration of Luppold and Huot for the Library Arts Center’s success, particularly during the height of the pandemic, when the Library Arts Center had to find new ways to provide community programs, such as virtual classes or outside activities.
While happy to be able to host in-person activities again, Luppold said she felt their offerings are even stronger now, as the pandemic ultimately broadened the ways that the center can serve the community.
“It’s rewarding to get back to our old favorites but also have this toolbox and new way of doing things to merge in,” Luppold said. “So our programming will always be shifted, but for the better.”
In addition to adding remote and hybrid art classes, the Library Arts Center created “CSAs”, or “Community Supported Art,” a spin off of Community Supported Agriculture programs.
The Community Supported Art (CSA) program is a membership-funded initiative, in which the membership fee is used to commission original artwork produced on small 16-square-inch canvases. Each month the CSA member receives one new original piece in the mail.
“It’s been a new way to connect artists and the community,” Luppold said. “And it’s a new way to get people to appreciate handmade and put art right into their hands.”
To learn more about the Library Arts Center, including hours of exhibits and programs, visit their website at libraryartscenter.org.
reporter @eagletimes.com
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