Arizona Illustrated 1151: Booklovers delight, Painting & Plants

This week on Arizona Illustrated… we join you from the Joel D. Valdez Main Library to talk about Books Invited to the Cookout; Make Way for Books is fostering readers and authors alike; take a trip to the Gilded Age from a Black perspective with seamstress Ivy Wahome; Tucson master painter Jim Waid and his son Paul paint a visceral world and a look at University of Arizona’s unique campus arboretum.


Make Way for Books
Make Way for Books has had a tremendous impact over the past 25 years promoting literacy in our community. Now they are finding creative ways to development a new app that will encourage a younger generation of readers.
Since 2016, every fall semester Professor Stephanie Pearmain’s ENGL 389 class (Intro to Publishing in the Children's and YA market) partners with the Make Way for Books app team for 8-weeks. Here students have the opportunity to not only learn aspects of writing for children and publishing, but the value in community engagement. To date nearly 20 stories written, for this class have been illustrated and published on the app.

Tom interviews Jessica Pryde
The Pima County Public Library’s Adult Fiction Selector discusses ‘Books Invited to the Cookout’ a new effort by the library’s Kindred team to celebrate contemporary Black authors and literature across multiple genres.

Ivy, Gilded in Black
Ivy Wahome, from Nakuru, Kenya is the first black woman member of the I.A.T.S.E. local union 415 since it was chartered in Tucson. She is currently working on her MFA in Costume Design and Production at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of Arizona. Her show, “Gilded Age” sets out the stage to show us a flipped version of a Victorian period from the African cultural perspective.

Jim and Paul Waid – The Visceral World
We do not change because of what we know, we change because what we feel about what we know. Having an emotional experience with something created by an artist can make a difference. Jim Waid, a Tucson artist, who is in major museums including New York Museum of Modern Art, is celebrating a career of more than 40 years. He paints a visceral world bursting with life, filled with light and energy. His paintings change what we feel about the Sonoran Desert. His dreamy landscapes refence Abstract Expressionism, Color Field paintings and Victorian botanicals. Each brush stroke and color reflect a moment under Southwest's vast blue sky. Experiencing a Jim Waid painting in person means entering the mysterious world of Sonoran Desert’s exuberant fauna and walking under the shimmering Mesquite trees. Jim says, “my paintings are enactments of the world around me.” He invites all “to step right in!”

Campus Arboretum
The University of Arizona main campus houses a unique collection of plants from arid and semi-arid climates around the world. These plants represent the University's history, and a walk around campus can become a look at the agricultural and cultural development of the modern southwest.