Crushed Ivory Design Challenge - Call for Entries - U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The U.S Fish & Wildlife Service is hosting the Crushed Ivory Design Challenge. Please read more about it, see examples, and read application instructions and deadlines on their site. This is an amazing design challenge with opportunities to bring your creative vision and proposal to fruition while also bringing more attention to the plight of elephants.

The Challenge:
We’re asking for your help to transform this crushed ivory to memorialize the elephants that have died, educate the world about the dangers of buying ivory, and crush illegal ivory trade. Through this pro-bono design challenge, you have the opportunity to create a compelling, thought provoking, informative and impactful display to increase awareness about our fight against illegal wildlife trade.

San Antonio-based Artist and Photographer Mark Menjivar - Visiting Artist Lecture

Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 5pm in the Gallery Flex Space in JCM, the Art & Design Building at Texas State University.

Mark's work explores diverse subjects through photography, stories, and found objects while emphasizing dialogue and collaboration. Mark recently received his MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University. His work has been shown at venues across the country including The Houston Center for Photography, The San Antonio Museum of Art, The Wignall Museum of Art, The University of Wisconsin-­Milwaukee, Baylor University, The Southwest School of Art and Central Michigan University. Mark's work has also been featured by TED, NPR, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Gastronomica, Orion Magazine, GUP Magazine and dozens more. In addition, his series, You Are What You Eat, won Director's Choice from CENTER and was a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 project in 2009. In 2011 Mark received an artist grant from The Breckenridge Foundation. More information about Mark's work can be found at http://www.markmenjivar.com/.

Finding Images Workshop 9/26/14 @ 2PM

The Merry Family, Jan Havicksz. Steen, 1668, oil on canvas, h 110.5cm × w 141cm. From the Rijksmuseum.

Need to find good quality images for your presentations or papers? Come to the Finding Images workshop to learn how use the library’s image databases, books, and public domain/open access image websites to find high quality images in all different subject areas including art, advertising, journalism, popular culture and more. Presentation tips, copyright, and tech tools will be also briefly be covered. 9/26/14 @ 2PM in Alkek 101. Register here.

Read A Banned Comic!! Exhibit and Watchmen Movie Screening

Come see the Read a Banned Comic!! exhibit on the 2nd floor of the library. It is to your right on the way to the elevators. There are goodies for the taking as long as I have some to give. They go fast!

We will be showing the Watchmen movie on Monday, September 22nd @ 6PM in the Alkek Teaching Theater (Alkek 250). It is across the breezeway from the library's main entrance.

Alkek Book Covers Exhibit - last day Sept 12th!

Designs and styles from the Texas State University Library collections. Now on display on the 1st floor of Alkek Library until September 12th. 

"Over the years, we have heard complaints about the age of the Alkek Library book collection.   We have grown from a teaching college to an emerging research institution.  To that end, we are working on making sure there is and will always be room for the most current and relevant information available in all disciplines, in print or online.  However, without maintaining some of these older parts of the collection, the history of the collection and of the institution would be lost.  We have original examples of artistic book cover styles and designs because we have retained some these unique titles. 

Interestingly, some of the best examples we have of these classic book cover designs come from the American and German Literature sections of the Alkek collection.  That would not be surprising, considering the area of Texas we are in.  We suspect that from our very beginnings, faculty and perhaps some of the local community, contributed their love, knowledge, and even some of the books themselves, to our collections.  These books date from the 1890s to the 1920s." - Selene Hinojosa, Head Collection Development Librarian at Alkek Library, curated this show and wrote this description.

The exhibit is beautiful! Go check it out!

Mark Snyder's Fiji Island Mermaid Press = Friday Art Fun!

Triceratops on Stage, Marc Snyder

I wanted to share this great site that I stumbled upon, Fiji Island Mermaid Press. Linocuts, artists' books, drawing, collage, and more by Marc Snyder. He has info on how to make small books from one sheet of paper, free artists' books for download by himself and other artists, and how to make a linocut.

Snyder has a Book of the Month Club that you can subscribe to and get a little handmade book with copies of his linocuts and other mixed media mailed to you once a month. I am requesting a subscription for Alkek Library!

Check out Snyder's wonderful Blog, Flickr, and Tumblr sites too!

3rd Annual Alkek Library Staff Art Show now on Display!

The 3rd Annual Alkek Library Staff Art Show is now on display from June 2nd to July 31st in the 1st floor exhibit cases in the Alkek Library Building. It includes work from Alkek Library staff as well as other IT department staff in the building.

The show includes paintings, photographs, textiles, prints, ceramics, and more. It is curated by Alkek staff Katie Salzmann, Tara Spies Smith, and Hithia Davis.

Please come enjoy our talents!