Library serves as community hub

STEUBENVILLE -- Whether you are looking to appreciate art, want to be involved in creating art or are just looking for a way to remember the legacy of Dolly Parton, there’s something being offered by the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County to participate in.

“That’s the whole point and the whole reason we are here,” said Sarita Asawa, the outreach coordinator for the countywide library system.

“I think events, especially, give everyone a chance to gather together for different themes and for different reasons,” she added. “They kind of pull us out of our houses and pull us out of our little bubble and give us a chance as a community to come together and interact with something new, or to celebrate something we already love.”

Among those events is the first Library Art and Craft Festival, which will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at Belleview Park.

A family friendly event, the festival will feature numerous vendors and activities, Asawa explained.

“We have some fantastic vendors that I am really excited about,” she said. “There will be everything from a stained glass person to watercolors, there will be chain mail and one person who is bringing in Turkish coffee and Persian iced tea.

“It’s a good mix of really eclectic local artists,” Asawa continued. “And on top of that, we will have multiple free library programs going on that will help to fill out the event.”

The festival will be set up in the lower part of the park, with vendors lining the side of the road that runs in front of the tennis court area. There will be tents set up in the area for activities for children and adults. The Friends of the PLSJC, the nonprofit, volunteer organization that supports the services of the library, will be holding a 25-cent used book sale, she added.

“We’re doing a teen and adult sip-and-paint, and we also are doing a community collaborative art project where people will be able to come in, fill out a little panel and we will constrict them into a mural afterward. Re-Craft Steubenville is running the children’s gazebo, and there should be some good projects going on there.”

That festival overlaps with the library’s art walk, which has been set up in Belleview Park for several weeks now.

“We think art is very vital to the community,” Asawa explained. “This provides a new venue and a new space for everyone as a community to come together, to create something new and to celebrate our local artists.”

Continuing is the library’s art walk that is set up through the lower portion of the park. It is similar to the popular story walks the library holds throughout the year and allows visitors to enjoy some classic works and learn more about the artist behind them. Those who complete the walk will receive a prize.

“The art walk goes right around the path that kind of curves through the back of the park,” Asawa explained. “You can walk along the path and see and read about the different pieces of art.”

Included are works by artists with ties to Steubenville -- Thomas Cole and Eliphalet Frazer Andrews -- as well as Frida Kahlo, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Edvard Munch, Johannes Vermeer, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Diego Val’zquez, Katsushika Hokusai, Artemisia Gentilesch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Georges-Pierre Seurat and Grant Wood.

Cole was born in Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, England, on Feb. 1, 1801, and moved with his family to Fourth Street in Steubenville in 1818. He left for Philadelphia in 1822 and eventually settled in Catskill, N.Y. He was the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Displayed on the art walk is “The Titan’s Goblet.”

Andrews was born in Steubenville on June 8, 1835. He was a portraitist whose work can be found at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Ohio State Capitol, the White House and the U.S. Capitol. He served as the director of the Corcoran School of Art and the Corcoran Art Gallery. Displayed on the art walk is “Woman Seated in a Garden.” He is buried in Union Cemetery.

Friday will offer the chance to remember the late Dolly Parton. It has been designated by Gov. Mike DeWine as Dolly Parton Day, because it falls on 9-25, which is a nod to the 1980 film “9 to 5,” which Parton starred in and sang the title song for. Parton died Aug. 25 at the age of 80.

Her book “Coat of Many Colors” has been featured this month on the StoryWalk through Beatty Park. Families have the opportunity to walk through the park and read a different page from the book at various stops. Children who complete the walk can visit the Main Branch of the library to receive a prize.

Parton was a promoter of early literacy in children and created Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Each month, every child who has registered for the program will receive a free, high-quality, age-appropriate book from birth to age 5. Ohio’s program will distribute 432,249 books this month. Jefferson County’s program, which is administered through the United Way of Jefferson County, reports 2,050 children in the county receive a book each month.

The StoryWalk is a collaboration between the Friends of Beatty Park and the library system. Asawa said the close partnership allowed them to be able to quickly pivot and replace the book that had been scheduled for September with Parton’s, which will be displayed through the end of the month.

These events, like many others held through the year, help to keep the library connected with the community.

“We’ve done everything, including the Nutcracker Tea Party at Christmastime,” Asawa said. “In the spring, with the Friends, we do the used book sale, and we have done interactive murder-mysteries with ‘Clue.’ You name it, and we have a variety of events. The big thing is that we are not only here to enrich and inform, we also offer a lot of entertainment. It’s part of our role as a community hub.”