Libraries as a work of art
An afternoon on Granville Island with the folks, especially as a youngster in Grade 2, doesn’t often inspire a decision on one’s still-distant post secondary education.
Trips to the Kids Market, or a run through the water park on a hot day are more bankable outcomes of the popular family outing, but for then pint-size Suzy Stroet, it was all about her future.
“I said to myself ‘I’m going to go to Emily Carr [university],’” says Stroet, with a smile.
“I just knew it. I knew that’s where I wanted to be.”
And that’s where she went. Stroet graduated from the renowned institution in 2003 and garnered praise for the pieces she displayed in the annual grad exhibition, and for her work in a group show in Spain, part of an exchange Stroet participated in during her third year.
But, like many art school grads before and after her, Stroet had a bit of a graduation crisis. Or, as she called it, “fourth-year terror.”
“I started asking people about their jobs and one of them was a librarian,” says Stroet.
“And she was so enthusiastic about it, things just went from there.”
Stroet immediately signed up for the master’s program in Library and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, and has been working as a librarian since completing the degree. And while Stroet says she loves her day-to-day situation, her career has found itself bleeding into her first professional love.
Inspired by her surroundings, Stroet committed to canvas her take on the library and, in particular, the tension between the library as a romantic space and a more pragmatic, utilitarian place of information retrieval.
She separated her work into two distinct sections. The first group consists of a series of oil paintings of the now-extinct book stacks at the downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Stark and intensely realistic, the works highlight that communal gathering spaces are now taken up by banks of computers which encourage a different kind of interaction with the library.
The second depicts her explorations of the simplicity, or difficulty, of retrieving information. For instance, a simple search for information on the human papillomavirus (HPV) yielded a plethora of websites, but a filter on the terminal prevented Stroet from accessing any of them. Not coincidentally, the old book stacks captured in her first series have been replaced by an automated retrieval system.
It’s an environment in flux, she says, and her work is an exploration of that. It’s part nostalgia, part fear and part celebration. And it’s what she sees nearly every day.
Stroet’s exhibition continues until April 20. The Lynn Valley main library is located at 122 Lynn Valley Rd. For more information and exhibit hours, visit www.nvartscouncil.ca or www.suzystroet.com.
skolenko@northshoreoutlook.com
twitter.com/seankolenko
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