Visit the Western corner of Watzek's 3rd floor to experience Laura Nash's (LC 2013) installation, The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, on display through April 10. The installation combines banners of printed text, recorded readings of texts such as House of Leaves and Finnegan's Wake, and projections of text. Nash created this piece during the course of ART 227, Special Topics in Studio Art.

This month check out Library Diversions or our online display of books that support the themes of L&C's 31st Annual Gender Studies Symposium. Check out our selection on the Diversions bookshelf or on our Pinterest pinboard.

The full schedule of events for the Gender Studies Symposium, which runs March 14-16, can be viewed here.

Oregon's Iron Era, an exhibit which tells the story of iron works in Oswego, Oregon, will be on display through Friday, March 9 on the 1st floor of Watzek Library (in the corridor to Media Services).

This exhibit covers the West Coast's first iron furnace, constructed in 1867, and the corresponding pipe foundry, railway, charcoal-producing operations in the Tryon watershed. The exhibit depicts the demographics of the workers and residents of Oswego, the technology used in the iron works, and the environmental impacts, largely through the words of those who participated in this pioneering enterprise. This exhibit is on loan from the Lake Oswego Heritage House. For more information, please visit the Lake Oswego Heritage House website.

The Gregory, a sculptural rowboat by Claire Jamieson (LC 2015), will be visible throughout the Spring semester on Watzek's 1st floor (in the corridor to Media Services). Claire created The Gregory last semester, as a body extension project for Garrick Imatani's 3D foundations class. We're excited to exhibit her work, and we look forward to seeing the work she creates in the coming years.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens in February 1812, check out our substantial exhibit of British and American first editions of Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

The exhibit focuses on A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Moonstone, and Dan Simmons’s Drood. First editions are displayed along with examples of parts and periodical issues of the novels and other memorabilia. Other cases explore the topics of illustration, serial publication, the two American reading tours by Dickens, and issues of copyright in nineteenth century England and America.

This exhibit is a collaboration between the Watzek Library and English Department. Exhibit text by English faculty members Pauls Toutonghi and Andrea Hibbard, junior Dana Bronson, and Watzek staff member Paul Merchant. Design by Jeremy Skinner.

Dec 6 at 6:30 pm, join students from Garrick Imatani's studio art class, Alternative Distribution, as they showcase the work that culminated their book, Semiotics of Babespace.

The students produced this book during the course of the fall 2011 semester, then collaborated with Publication Studio and the Lewis & Clark College bookstore to publish and distribute copies. Throughout the semester, Imatani's students explored alternative means of exhibiting and distributing artworks, outside the context of gallery spaces. In addition to publishing a book of their artworks, the class collaborated with Watzek Library Digital Initiatives to develop a web site, Alternative Distribution, which displays the students' visual maps of Portland, OR.

Please join us in the Library Classroom for snacks, coffee, and a celebration of the semester's work in performance art, digital imaging, video, book arts, and public sculpture.

Visit the North side of Watzek's 3rd floor to see Elizabeth Strong's (LC, 2014) sculpture, You're Nothing But a Pack of Cards!, on display through November 27. Strong's sculpture is a three dimensional translation of Sir John Tenniel's drawings for Alice in Wonderland and is cleverly constructed, almost exclusively, with playing cards.

Laura Nash's (LC, 2013) Twilight Forest will be on view in Watzek's Reading Room through Saturday, November 26. Nash describes her installation as a three-dimensional reinterpretation of an illustration from Clive Barker's Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War. The cardboard and wooden arch stands 93 inches tall, and is embellished with yarn, wire and paint.

Check out this totemic sculpture by Monroe Isenberg (LC, 2013), which will be on display until December 1 in Watzek's Reading Room.

In Isenberg's own words, "The two totems began as an examination of the interplay between materials: wood and metal. As the individual pieces progressed, they took on the meanings of the words health and pain demonstrated through their basic elements and principles. The slimmer of the two flows like a canyon or river, which I believe to be representations of health. The other takes on a strongly geometric sharp shape in its fundamental line representing pain."

For more information about student art exhibits at Watzek, contact Stephanie Beene (sbeene@lclark.edu).

Stop by during library hours to view a collection of ancient works that has survived into our digital age. This exhibit will be on display throughout the fall semester in the library atrium.

Only a small fraction of the books written in the Ancient Greek and Roman world have survived to our day. Transmission of these texts through the centuries relied upon hand-written manuscripts copied during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The printed books in this exhibit represent some of the works that survived the eons and were available for publication with the new technology of the printing press beginning in the fifteenth century. These printed editions served as a vital link for the transmission of ancient literature from the days of the hand-copied manuscript in the Ancient and Medieval worlds to our own digital age. Watzek Special Collections has collaborated with L&C Classics professor, Gordon Kelly, to create this exhibit of works and write its accompanying texts.

Image: IA Flemish print shop around 1600 by Jan van der Straet (Stradanus). From left to right: compositors, proof readers, printers inking and pulling sheets, a young “printer’s devil,” the publisher, and above him, the author or editor working by candlelight.