Reading rainbows: This Spokane Public Library artist-made swag is fresh and locally made

Spokane Public Library has rolled out a new collaboration with local artists to create custom library-inspired designs for a whole line of fun goods, including T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, stickers, bookmarks and limited edition library cards.

Four artists are behind this collaboration, all former or future participants of the Hive’s Artist-In-Residence program: Genie Maples, Sarah Louise Windisch, Katie Creyts and Hannah Charlton.

Their works are a result of their personal library experiences and interpretations of what the Spokane Public Library brings to the community.

Maples is a recent transplant from Asheville, North Carolina and will begin her residency at the Hive in April.

“One of the first resources that I found here was the library and this residency at the Hive. So I felt immediately welcomed in the community before I even knew anybody here. So aside from the fact that I grew up as a reader and grew up as a library kid, the way those two things dovetail here just feel like two parts of my history coming together, like two things that have saved me,” Maples said.

Windisch grew up in the Inland Northwest and is due to begin her residency alongside Maples in the spring.

“I grew up in Idaho Falls and was a library kid there for sure. I had my library card number memorized, and I was that kid that you hated to see coming, you know, because I was going to have the big stack.

Creyts is a professor of art at Whitworth University who recently completed her residency at the Hive. She has long found inspiration in the breadth of resources the library offers.

“When I first moved to Spokane, which was in 2008, I relied heavily on the library at that time just for media. I would go there and check out DVDs and things like that,” Creyts said. “My work does lean on literary sources. I get inspired by reading, so I have a keen connection with the library that way too.”

Charlton is a former student of Creyts and holds a similar appreciation for the diversity of things one can find and do at the library.

“Libraries are so wonderful, and it seems like they shouldn’t work, but they do, and I think that’s a wonderful thing about living in our modern world that we can go to a place and just take books or rent a little guitar, or just have a meeting space for a while,” Charlton said.

You can browse and purchase items at bonfire.com/store/spokane-public-library. All sales proceeds go directly to Spokane Public Library.

The library has also partnered with local breweries like Whistle Punk, Four Eyed Guys, Brick West, Iron Goat and Perry Street, to offer custom coasters. Or while you’re out and about, you may even spot a few billboards that feature the local designs.

Although united by one concept, each artist created a unique work with a variety of visual styles and inspirations.

Maples’ work invites you into a warping, evolving library full of colors, shapes and trinkets of inspiration.

“The sort of springboard for this piece was an oil painting I had made that was called ‘The Library’, and a lot of the lines and the stacks of books and the sort of jumble of things is what I carried over into this piece,” Maples said.

Her color choices demonstrate the variety of experiences one can have at the library, from quiet solace to invigorating creativity.

“I tried to bring a sort of a balance and a liveliness. I tried to use, you know, obviously some greens for that idea of growth. There’s a lot of blue and violets and cool colors really to reference the feeling of the library, that sort of fluidity and safety and calm and quiet and space to reflect. So I wanted that sort of juxtaposition of calming and also of movement and vitality,” Maples said.

Also a fan of loud colors and shapes, Windisch harkens to the punchy designs of past decades while centering one of Spokane’s cutest, and perhaps most amusing, mascots, the marmot.

“There’s nothing better to me on the internet than animal videos, and so honestly the very first thing I carved when I thought, ‘OK, I’m gonna really concentrate on this art thing,’ is the marmot I used for the library campaign,” Windisch said.

When it came to this project in particular, decor of libraries past sprung to mind.

“When the library extended the offer to me to design for the program, I was really thinking of those ‘READ’ posters from, you know, the ‘80s or ‘90s that had LeVar Burton, and Yoda,” Windisch said.

Keeping on theme, Windisch used popular maximalist aesthetics from the same era to serve as a backdrop for her block printed marmot.

“Memphis Design is skating rink carpet from the ‘90s and really bold, geometric designs. And so I use the stencil that you can get for architecture and interior design, and I trace a lot of circles and triangles so they’re perfect,” Windisch said.

Creyts was tasked with keeping young audiences in mind for her work, resulting in piece that feels like a page from your favorite childhood book, featuring two lesser known local creatures, the porcupine and the magpie.

“At the Hive, you know, there was just like a lot of people working together on different things, but also this immense creativity happening in one space … I wanted them to be doing something, to be thinking about the library not just as like a resposit but as a dynamic place, you know, where relationships can be built and also things can be made, and tools can be borrowed,” Creyts said.

To double down on this idea of borrowed items from the library, she pulled the textures for her piece directly from the library itself.

“I went into the Northwest Room and just got all these books that had weird patterns on them, and scanned them, and that’s where the animal patterns are from. So like, the bumpy texture on the porcupine is the actual cover of a genealogy book. And the whirly pattern that is the branches is an inside cover from a book,” Creyts said.

Charlton’s piece features a similar calm, featuring a woman reading a book with a slight smile to indicate a peaceful joy. She chose to model this piece on the arts and crafts movement, which was in turn inspired by one of Charlton’s favorite types of works, the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

“The arts and crafts movement I find fascinating, partly because it’s great to see an interpretation of an art style that I also find inspiring, but also because it was a really socially involved art movement. A lot of the famous artists were also socialists or feminists and part of the, I guess, driving philosophy of the movement was making things that were beautiful and valuing labor, valuing the making of objects as something that’s important to society,” said Charlton.

To learn more about the artists and their collaboration with Spokane Public Library, visit spokanelibrary.org/librariesinspire.