Dear Friends,

Looking back on the year 2023 in Programs & Exhibitions, highlights include artist Eli Nixon’s communally-created installation Bloodtide, now animating PPL’s Atrium; the Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading, gloriously restored to its rightful place as the kick-off to Black History Month on the first Sunday in February, with poetry lovers attending in-person (everyone still wearing masks and showing proof of vaccination) and via livestream; the collaborative, community-centered, participatory exhibition Picturing the Pandemic: Images from the Pandemic Journaling Project and the Rhode Island COVID-19 Archive; and our fall pop-up series of activations of the Joan T. Boghossian Gallery, including artists Dana Heng and Moy Chuong’s New Battambang Market; the Pop-Up Langston Hughes Reading Room and Event Series, a collaboration by the Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading Committee and Blackearth Collective & Lab; and our current exhibition, Entropy & Artistry: A showcase of works from PPL's Makerspace featuring creations crafted by artists who have participated in classes and Open Studios in the Library’s Workshop.

The fall pop-up series gave us a way to address the growing community need for spaces to show and share creative work of all genres, and to continue our model of community-led curation. With this model, we focus our assets on projects already happening in the community that could use some space, staffing, or other resources to reach a wider audience, realize a next step, or experiment with an initiative or idea that might otherwise be out of reach. 

The pop-up series also emphasized artistic process, not just product, and each of the participating artists/curators created a setting in which their creative works were displayed within a context that allowed viewers to better understand the histories, research questions, and artistic methods that had contributed to the works themselves.



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The emphasis on process is perhaps most apparent in the current exhibition, Entropy & Artistry: A showcase of works from PPL’s Makerspace, curated by Community Partnerships Facilitator Sophia Ellis and Maker Education Manager Brenda Adames. While a member of the PVD Young Makers staff, Brenda was a frequent and active presence in the Workshop, so we were delighted when she joined the PPL staff in August this year. We wasted no time in reaching out to see if she’d like to work with us on a pop-up exhibition featuring work made in the Workshop classes and Open Studios, and were thrilled when she said an enthusiastic “YES!” While assisting Workshop participants in their creative efforts and encouraging them to submit their work for the exhibition, Brenda also worked with Sophia to curate an exhibition that would feature that creative work along with examples of the artmaking material and equipment available for public use in the Workshop, thus giving viewers a better understanding of how those works came to be. 

The beautiful, inviting exhibition opened on December 4, and last week I had a chance to check in with Sophia and Brenda about how they approached the process of putting it all together. Here are excerpts from our conversation: 

CB: Brenda, how was your first season leading the Workshop, and how did this pop-up fit into that experience?

BA: I was surprised by how many patrons were coming in for Open Studios each week! When I would be in the Workshop previously, before I was working here full time, there would be a lot of the same people coming back, but there didn’t used to be such a variety of new people coming in through the door. I think what helped a lot were some of our new initiatives, like hosting a few events with people who don’t typically come in – one as part of Design Week RI, when a ton of new people came in, and also during the Imagining America National Gathering that took place at PPL. Both of those helped to get the word out, and it’s been amazing to see people come back to the Workshop for the Open Studios. 

It’s also been a lot of fun to roll out the new badging system, which started in November, and the Workshop equipment trainings that are outside of Open Studios – and what was most surprising about those was that they would all be fully booked, people would be booking months in advance for the 10 available spots! I learned a lot in that process, I realized that to really know the Workshop equipment you have to make something on it, so I would have people come in and learn the equipment on Monday night and then come back Tuesday to the Open Studio and actually make something. I think that that process of coming back on the second night to make something really solidifies the things you learned the day before. And also surprising was that 90% of people actually came back for the second night of the badging process! I was worried that it might be too much to ask people to come two nights in a row, but even if they couldn’t make it on Tuesday they would come on Thursday and finish the process that week. 

CB: For those who are not familiar, could you tell us about the badging process, what it is and what it means to get a badge?

BA: What I noticed, and what we kept hearing was, "How can there be more Workshop access and more Open Studio hours?" – and the only issue with that is that I’m only one person and have limited capacity. So I wanted to create a volunteering system, where if you are trained and fully badged [indicating proficiency] on all the equipment, you could become a volunteer. And once we have a few patrons who are fully badged and willing to volunteer – and we’ve only been doing this for a month, and we already have two patrons who are fully badged on all the equipment, which is amazing! – then the hope is to create an extra slot each week that is volunteer-run alone. So I would still lead Open Studios on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but one other evening, or a Saturday, could be volunteer-led. That way we would have more openings and availability of the space. And what’s really cool is that once you’re badged on equipment, you get a sticker on your library card, and I can go into your library record and electronically make a note, so that you can then go into any library in Providence or even in the state where they have that equipment and they can see that you’re badged and able to use that equipment. So it’s another way to increase access. 

CB: Sophia, can you talk about our experimental fall season, now that the final exhibition is up? Can you talk about why we did it, and how it has or hasn’t worked? And then segue into your experience of working with Brenda on the current exhibition?

SE: Well, similar to the badging system that Brenda has spearheaded in the library, we’ve had a conversation within our department, asking "What does accessibility look like in a gallery space, and how is the gallery space being used by the public?" This pop-up fall series was such a wonderful way to engage with people who are creating art, who are getting grants, and who are participating in projects, but who don’t necessarily have the public space to exhibit or practice anywhere in Providence – because it either costs a lot or there’s a long line to be able to get your art up. We have been talking about things like, instead of having one group taking up the space for a long show, what would it be like to have a dash of different artists and groups coming in? So for Dana Heng and Adam Choi’s exhibition, which was more of a “capital E” Exhibition, artists came in to curate the space with their work. Then we explored what it would mean to have a participatory exhibition, and we worked with our community partners from the Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading Committee. With this third exhibition, we kind of combined the exhibition with the participatory element, and asked, what would it look like if there was not just one form of participation, but multiple forms? I think that this last exhibition is a great example of what a community-led exhibition is when you have 30 or 40 different artists, and all their stories that you’re trying to tell, in a really small space! There are artists coming into the Workshop and working through their art and their process – what would it mean to replicate what they’re doing in the Workshop in the actual gallery space, where people are able to see the finished work, but also the process they went through? So it’s less about finished work and it’s more about, how are artists engaging with these materials and creating work that they love?

CB: Brenda, when we first approached you about the possibility of this collaboration, what first went through your head? What did the idea spark for you?

It was really exciting to think about partnering with patrons in a way that I’d never been able to do before, being able to ask, “Hey, would you be willing to be intentional about what you’re making in the space and then display it at a gallery?” It was super-exciting to be able to showcase all the versatile things that can be made in that one space! The patrons that come through our door are just so creative, I was really looking forward to being able to represent them and the work they do. And I was a little scared, to be honest! I’d never done anything of that magnitude, and I was afraid of being able to follow up with that many people and hold them accountable to the process. A lot of people didn’t want to fill out the formal application, and just wanted to confirm by word of mouth that they were going to bring their work in by the deadline, it was like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll bring it in.” So it was challenging to get it well organized, and I think that artists in general are pretty “Type B” in the way they go about life, so it was challenging to create structure and a system. When you’re dealing with so many different people and personalities it can be hard, I felt like I was pulling teeth a lot of the time, like please, please, just fill out the form, it will only take two seconds! But then other people did fill out the form and then never brought their piece in, and that was also hard, because we’d had so many conversations, and they seemed on-board and excited, and then to have things like that flop last-minute was a little bit heart-breaking, but it was definitely a process of problem solving and thinking on your feet as things came up. So I guess my initial thoughts were, “How exciting!” and also “How terrifying!”

CB: Sophia, how does that reflect your work over your first year? Does any of that sound familiar to you from our work in Programs & Exhibitions as we’ve navigated implementing the community curation model? 

SE: When we started working on this, Brenda said to me, “I can’t believe you do this work all the time!” but when I was in the Workshop watching her interns make art, I was saying to her “You are dealing with so much!” It was an interesting job swap, or like being seen in each other’s positions – I’m not going to say that we trauma bonded through some of it, but there were definitely some moments where we were like, what’s going on?! I think there are so many invisible elements that go into helping to facilitate a space where people are creating their own stories and using it to display their work, not with an official theme or direction. We had only a couple of months to do this, and it felt like not enough time, and there are so many little things that piled up and took hours and hours but no one will ever see when they see the exhibition, it’s a long list and it’s always changing. It’s about being organized and it’s about juggling a lot of moving parts and being flexible to how everything changes – you’re working with people inside the institution, you’re working with people from outside of the institution, and it was so nice to work with Brenda, who is here at the library, it makes such a difference to be working with someone where you can just go downstairs and figure out together, ok, what are we going to do? But that’s just not going to always be the case. And in a project like this I think having one system for everything just doesn’t work, because different people’s needs are going to be different. 

BA: One thing I noticed about Sophia’s job is how interdisciplinary it is, it requires so much creativity and problem solving to use the gallery within the limits and constraints that exist within that space. So every single item in there became a creative problem solving exercise of how can we display this to the best of our ability in a way that is catching of the eye, and beautiful, and respectful of the walls, and so forth. It was so cool to find creative ways to utilize the room – I can’t walk into that room anymore and just see a room, I see all the ways that Sophia uses her beautiful mind to make the space so gorgeous – I was just in awe of all the communication that had to take place to just do the simplest thing!

CB: Brenda, when the possibility of submitting work for the exhibition came up in the Workshop, did you see changes in the ways people were working?

BA: Of course! I would say that Silvania was a perfect example, she was someone who started coming to Open Studios just as I was starting at the Workshop. She found out about the showcase, and then just began to brainstorm all these ideas, and was just consistently working on her project during Open Studio, she came in every single Tuesday, without fail, for three months, to work on it (hers is the big vinyl project that you see when you first come in). What was cool was that the people who did commit to the exhibition became kind of an anchor in the Workshop community, my interns now all know her, she would bring cakes for us, I bought a hot water kettle and we would all have tea, it just became very homey and cozy as time went on, and we all got to know each other really well. It was so cool to see the community of Providence making a home within the Workshop! My interns started to get really attached to these patrons, Silvania’s an older woman and the interns started asking her for advice, and it was just really cool to see Gen Z and Boomers hanging out and having a blast, and having conversations! It was so interesting to see the patrons also getting to know each other, exchanging numbers, grabbing coffee outside of the library. This project gave them something to want to come back to the Workshop for, and that created a sense of community that I’ve never seen within the Workshop. It’s like they were all working towards the same goal. I don’t think that that deep sense of connection would have happened without the goal of having something to display for the Workshop.

CB: Does this experience make you want to do this again?

BA: I was definitely thinking about that idea! It would be cool to do it every year, we learned so much, and if we did it again it would be so much smoother, and each time it would be even better. And patrons have been asking, “When is the next exhibition for the Workshop?” And now that it’s up I have patrons coming in, who’ve been here all fall, and they’re saying, “Oh, I didn’t know we could submit work,” and I’m like, “Dude, I spoke to you about this a few times!” But now that they’re seeing it they want to be part of the next one. I definitely think it’s worth exploring. It has a lot of PPL pride, too – everything in that space was made by someone within the four walls of PPL, and that’s so beautiful! It’s amazing to bring outsiders in to show work that they created in their studios or whatever, but it’s also cool to highlight work that people have created within the Library! 

CB: Sophia, your thoughts?

SE: I think it’s something that really honors the patrons who come here. It’s important for us to honor the things that people are doing, like Brenda said, because it makes them happy, these little joys. It could be something where they are working towards an exhibition, or maybe it encourages them to think about doing that when before they would have thought that they didn’t have the capacity. So it could encourage more people to come and create, make some art, feel a sense of connection in the Workshop.

BA: Silvania said that during COVID she felt so lonely, and that this weekly experience of coming to Open Studio has been her saving grace, she said that the Workshop feels like home. People are hungry for connection and community, and having the exhibition to work towards created this good, solid cohort of patrons who would come consistently to create, and that process created relationships. It’s so important to have reasons to come together, especially at a time when the world feels like everyone is drifting further and further apart from each other, it’s really good to have reasons to collaborate and work alongside each other, in the same space. That makes it all worth it. 

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If you haven’t seen the exhibition, we encourage you to come visit! It’s up until Wednesday, January 10, and there will be a closing event that evening. The artists will be there, along with Brenda and Sophia, so join us to learn more about the work on view as well as the Workshop offerings; there will be demonstrations of the equipment available and an opportunity to try your hand at many different creative practices. Learn more and register for the event here!

With that, we wish you safe and very happy holidays, we thank you for all your interest and support this year, and we very much look forward to seeing you in the new year! Stay tuned for announcements of 2024 programs and exhibitions, including the Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading on Sunday, February 4 -- save the date!

In gratitude,



Christina Bevilacqua xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSophia Ellis

Programs & Exhibitions Director xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxCommunity Partnerships Facilitator