The People’s Library breathes new life into old books

Hal Dockins
Contributing Writer

In the age of social media, people are always looking for new and innovative ways to get connected. This connection is often made through online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter; however, sociology and photography and film major Mark Strandquist has created a novel way of networking that is not made through cyberspace.

The People’s Library is an ongoing collaborative project that uses recycled library books and turns them into art. That art is in the form of narratives told by individuals and inscribed in the same pages of library books that were going to be trashed. Once the pages are made blank, a new history can be told.

“It sort of mirrors a social media project except in a sense of people physically being there,” Strandquist said. “There are a lot of problems in society because we are alienated from each other.”

Uniting such a large demographic was not easy. Strandquist started a project called Socially Engaged Art in the fall of 2012. The People’s Library launched in January 2013 and is an extension of that project.

As the project grew, so did Stran-dquist’s responsibilities. He and his
team spend a large chunk of each day answering emails and organizing events. Strandquist also conducts research and spends numerous hours a day at the traditional library.

“The People’s Library is a public art project to create a monument built not out of stone but of the stories of individuals all over the city and to do that in sustainable ways,” Strandquist said. “It brings diverse publics together. It becomes this meeting place for all of Richmond.”

The People’s Library collaborates with the community printmaking workshop Studio Two Three to hold printing sessions that give members of the community a chance to share their story. Studio Two Three prints a prompt and allows individuals to reflect on it as they wish. The books can be anonymous or authored but Strandquist thinks the anonymous stories are especially unique.

“The thing about (being) anonymous is there’s an extra power,” Strandquist said. “They can read a story and they don’t know who it’s by and that can stand in for you or your brother or your friend. I think there’s something really powerful about that.”

Though Strandquist created the project, he makes it clear that it’s not his art, but art of the participants that make it significant.

“It’s more about the participant’s history, and the participants struggle and their experiences,” he said.

He was motivated to establish the project because of his experiences spending time in low-income schools where books were not always readily available. As traditional libraries continue to lose funding due to budget cuts and media going online, Strandquist wanted to start a project that replaced what was being taken away.

The purpose of the People’s Library is to “not only challenge the form and function of public space but bringing these stories into the library and creating sustainable collective public art,”
Strandquist said.

“You go into your house and that house is defined by your history and I think if we bring that history into the People’s Library, that space will be defined by them.”