Artist Trust wants higher profile on East Side

In last week’s column, I pointed out that the 2007 Artist Trust GAP awards bore a distinctly west-of-the-Cascades look.

Of the 77 artists (out of 795 applicants) who won awards of up to $1,500, only six were from Eastern Washington. And of those, only one qualified for a literary grant: Pasco’s Gwendolyn James.

In answer, Shalon Parker, an assistant professor of art at Gonzaga University who doubles as an Artist Trust board member, wrote an e-mail that made some interesting points.

One, Parker wrote, “only 11 literary artists from Spokane County applied for a GAP this year and 41 artists total from Eastern Washington submitted applications for the 2007 GAP awards.”

Two, aware that “the vast majority of applicants are from the West Side of the state and thus the vast majority of Artist Trust awards go to artists on the West Side of the state,” Parker wrote that the “Artist Trust programming staff tries to heavily publicize its annual grant writing workshops here in Spokane.”

In fact, she said, a January workshop here attracted 50 artists – “despite a snowstorm that evening and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships taking place across the street at the Spokane Arena.”

Three, the Artist Trust staff tries to make the selection panels geographically diverse, Parker says.

“This year three of the 20 panelists came from Central or Eastern Washington, and six others were from outside King County,” she wrote, adding that time, distance and effort make it hard for more East Siders to take part in the process.

“Nevertheless,” Parker wrote, “I and other arts supporters in Eastern Washington would like to see more East Side artists applying for Artist Trust awards and using its comprehensive information services.

“Raising the profile of Artist Trust, giving it greater visibility and presence in Central and Eastern Washington, is a key priority of the Artist Trust Board and Executive Director (Fidelma McGinn).”

To obtain more information about Artist Trust, go online at www.artisttrust.org.

Google fever

There are many things that make life easy for today’s students, but Google has given them one thing more.

It’s called Google Book Search (http://books.google.com).

Let’s say I was assigned to do a research paper on one of my favorite novels, Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” All I have to do is go to the above site and type in the title, and I’ll be presented with a huge number of choices.

If I click on the first one – “Great Expectations – Page 3” – just that fast I can access the 1868 version of the novel, bearing a Harvard College Library imprint.

I can see a digital version, download a PDF file, read a summary and even buy a copy through Amazon.com or any number of other booksellers, or find it in a library (Gonzaga University has a copy).

What’s really cool, though, is the search function.

Say, for example, I want to find all references to Estella, the young woman over whom our hero Pip loses his heart. I just type in her name and up come the pages where Estella is mentioned.

Page 82, for example, where Miss Havisham orders Pip to “Call Estella.”

“To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to order,” wrote Dickens. “But she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star.”

Ah, what I could have done with that tool in my college English classes.

Look at the bus

If you happen to see a customized motorbus driving around North Idaho on Wednesday and Thursday, it’s probably the Book TV Bus, which is traveling around the country doing publicity for C-SPAN’s Book TV weekend programming.

The bus is scheduled to appear on Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. at the Coeur d’Alene Library, 201 E. Harrison, and from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Farmers Market, at Fifth Street and Sherman Avenue.

Thursday’s schedule is noon to 2 p.m. at Time Warner Cable, 2305 W. Kathleen Ave., and 4 to 6 p.m. at Post Falls Public Library/Twice Told Tales Book Store, 821 N. Spokane St.

For more information about Book TV, go online at www.booktv.org.

Libraries closing

If you’re a regular user of the Whitman County libraries, you’re going to be out of luck this coming week.

All 13 branches of the county library system will be closed through next Sunday for “maintenance projects and computer upgrades.” Aided by a federal grant, the library system is in the process of making each branch a wireless Internet hotspot.

Questions? Call Whitman County Library Director Kristie Kirkpatrick toll-free at (877) 733-3375.

Book talk

•Gay & Lesbian Book Group (“Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” by Alison Bechdel), 7 p.m. Tuesday, Auntie’s Bookstore, Main Avenue and Washington Street. Call (509) 838-0206.

•Literary Freedom Book Club (“The Way the Crow Flies,” by Ann-Marie MacDonald), 1 p.m. Saturday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

The reader board

•Jan Walker (“An Inmate’s Daughter”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Auntie’s Bookstore.