Picture It! The Power of Art

The Teen Read Week theme is Picture It! @your library. We love the theme for all the possibilities it brings through films, artwork, photos, and so much more. Art has the power to compel us, inspire us, and inform us. We may have never set foot in France, but we all know what the Eifel Tower looks like, because we have seen photographs and paintings, maybe even miniature statues. We find beauty in the chaos of Jackson Pollock’s paintings and Tiffany’s stained glass. Like the artwork in the NEH’s Picturing America series, art can also share our history and our past with our current and our future.

In Carrie Ryan’s TheForest of Hands and Teeth, Mary is obsessed with the ocean. Raised in the confines of the village, she has never seen anything beyond the fence that keeps the unconsecrated away. Her mother would tell her stories about the ocean and once showed her a photo of her many times great grandmother standing in the ocean as a little girl. Mary describes it as a little girl surrounded by nothingness. However, even after the picture is long gone and Mary claims to no longer believe in the ocean, she still remembers her mother’s stories and that photograph. As she listens to the sound of the wind in the trees, she will close her eyes and imagines herself surrounded by the cool water.

It brings the question to mind…how important is art in your life? Leave a comment below to be entered for a chance to win a $15 gift card to Barnes & Noble. All comments must be made by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011).