The Allen County Public Library is offering limited-edition membership cards that feature work by three local artists.
Designs by muralists Theoplis Smith III, Bryan Ballinger and Tim Parsley are available to patrons at library locations and online, it announced Wednesday in a news release.
“We are so excited to introduce these new cards to the community,” Susan P. Baier, the library’s executive director, said in a statement. “This library is a dynamic, colorful, evolving representation of this community and our most basic tool, our library cards, should reflect that.”
The project was developed after the library’s successful push last year to increase membership led to a need for more cards, the release said.
The library orders cards in bulk roughly once a year, and it saw the need for extra cards as “an opportunity to highlight the community and the natural connection between libraries and the arts,” it said.
Library staff wanted pieces that “reflect the diversity of materials, services, and thoughts the ACPL aims to represent” and reached out to city representatives and the Downtown Improvement District’s program Art This Way to inquire about the artists and rights to the works. The artists were eager to participate, the release stated.
Ballinger’s card features his Calhoun Street mural “The Blue Birds.” Ballinger, who has worked at Microsoft as an illustrator and a professor of Digital Media Arts at Huntington University, said he knew right away he wanted to partner with the library.
“Funnily enough, I had been thinking about how I’d love to get involved with the ACPL more by maybe doing a mural or a sculpture for the library,” he said in the release. “I hadn’t thought about a library card, but it makes so much sense and literally puts my art at the communities’ fingertips.”
Smith, also known as Phresh Laundry, depicts Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks on the card he designed. The artist strives to promote art and culture in Fort Wayne as part of the Downtown Improvement District board and the Public Art Commission, to which Mayor Tom Henry appointed him, according to his website. His Rosa Parks art is also featured on a Fort Wayne bus for Black History Month.
Tim Parsley’s library card is an homage to Walt Whitman – a portrait of the poet with bold flowers on his head – is called “Arouse, for you must justify me!” and can be seen in a mural on West Wayne Street. He is an associate professor of studio art at the University of Saint Francis.
“My hope is that when our patrons pull this card out of their wallet, they are reminded, in even a small way, of just how special their library is,” Baier said.
The cards are available to new and existing library members, Aja Michael-Keller, director of communications, said in an email. New members can apply in person or online. Existing cardholders must go to the library to get one of the limited edition cards, and they will be issues a new library card number.
More information can be found online at acpl.info/library-card.
