In 2015, the Claremont Colleges Library offered our first Library Artist in Residence (LAIR) in partnership with Pitzer College. Librarian Alex Chappell and Pitzer Art Professor Tarrah Krajnak worked together to plan and run the residency, with generous funding provided by the Pitzer Campus Life Committee’s Strategic Initiatives Fund. Our inaugural LAIR was Steve Rowell, a research-based visual artist who works with still and moving images, sound, installation, maps, and spatial concepts. During his residency, Rowell held open studio hours in his workspace in the Library, worked with two Pitzer photography classes, and completed a new artwork. This work, Current State, a multi-spatial installation addressing water use in California, used large-scale photos, video, and drone footage, as well as maps and photographs from the Library’s collections. Several students assisted him in the creation and installation of the work, which was on view at the Library for a week in April 2015. The residency and installation fostered better connections not only between the Library and art faculty, but also between art and environmental analysis faculty. Students who worked with the artist experienced how a professional artist incorporates research into his practice and learned more about the Library’s special collections and GIS services, and saw how the Library can be a site for artistic experimentation.
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