At the Studio Art Lending Library, ‘you choose what speaks to you’

When planning to bring the student works to campus, the art department wanted to avoid decrees of what art should go where. The library concept makes the distribution of the art more meaningful for both the artist and borrower, ReStack says.

“You choose what speaks to you,” she says.

What spoke to Patrick Fina, an associate director at the Alford Community Leadership & Involvement Center (CLIC), is a framed poster advertising a past “Take Back the Night” event at Slayter Hall Student Union.

The eye-catching poster’s cause fit CLIC’s mission of student involvement, Fina says, and the tie-in to Slayter was a bonus.

Leaving Bryant with his one print, he grinned a bit devilishly. “Selfishly,” he said, “I was going to take them all.”

Valentine’s appreciation for Metzger’s painting deepened after the two met during the event. He told her about his time abroad, which he describes as “absolutely life-changing in terms of my studio practice.”

That strengthened her connection to the painting, she says, because she also had studied abroad in Europe. And now, rather than looking out her office window into the gray of winter, she can turn to Metzger’s painting and be transported to a bright spring day in Europe.