adaptatability & improvisation

I've been working on getting up a digital version of the FUTURE TENSE exhibit on display in the Library as well as plotting the Manifest week exhibit devoted to our Artist-in Residence's work coming up.  I've never prepared a full-on digital exhibit, and while it seems like it would be less work-intensive than hanging a physical show, there is a lot of coding and clicking and image saving, as well as million different moving pieces to wrangle into the finished product.  I did however, discover some techniques embedding flickr slideshows into blogger that bodes well for a little bit of reconstruction on my own website down the road that will be much more streamlined than it is currently, where it simply directs you to flickr to look at the work. I've gotten very adept at using free platforms to get pretty decent results that are user-friendly to beginners on no budget whatsoever (which is pretty much how A of R operates on the regular outside of a small amount of occasional supply funds.)

A few weeks back, I wrote an article about what I had planned to adapt to virtual learning in this weird time and what I was still trying to figure out when it comes to online programming for libraries.  So far, the virtual version of our zine nights has been slow to get rolling, but we have good hopes for our Art and Propaganda workshop debuting next week. Either way, the resources and materials will be available into the future, so even if they get less use now with everyone distracted, they are still online indefinitely.   I'm excited about these new things and how they might augment what we do in the future as well, even once we are back in physical spaces and to regular programming. There are always the limits of temporality in terms of audience, promotion, and reach. Some of the virtual things we're doing now can definitely be used to augment the more in-person programming.

Someone at work recently complimented me as "fearlessly creative or creatively fearless" and I laughed, mostly since so much of it feels like making it up as I go along, but then I suppose it's kind of always been that way outside the library--building websites and online journals building the press.  Even making and designing books was something I had to just figure out from scratch given limited budget and technology. Writing poems (or anything else for that matter). Creative techniques I am still figuring out--painting, printmaking, etc. Simple graphic design without fancy design technology.  Some people hate the phrase "fake it til you make it" but I appreciate that sometimes you have to fake like you know what you're doing in order to figure out exactly what it is you're doing.  Maybe it's more like improvising until you've got it down rather than "faking."  So much is a matter of just stating "Here is what I'm doing." and just figuring out how to do it.