Giant Letters of LOVE will be up for view at the Petersburg Public Library for the next two months, beginning with Friday for the Arts! on February 13, 2015. The “First Love” exhibit at the Library is collaboration between the Petersburg Department of Cultural affairs, Arts & Tourism, the Petersburg Department of Public Works, the Petersburg Public Library, and Public Art Petersburg, a new startup non-profit group.
Seven-foot-tall letters spelling out LOVE, painted in bright colors, will be located in a prominent location on the corner of Washington and Market, in front of the main Rotunda entrance to the Library. The letters should be highly visible to visitors to the Library and to traffic westbound on Washington and northbound on Market Street.
Each letter will have a prompt to illicit responses on four different themes. Visitors will be asked to respond on post-it notes at a workstation in the rotunda and post them on the two walls in the rotunda. Responses will also be recorded on Instagram.
After two months at the Library the letters will be moved first to another site in petersburg to be determined, then to the Petersburg Sports Complex for the summer, and later in the year to other Petersburg sites.
The “First Love” Exhibit will feature an interactive portion within the library. Visitors will be able to answer prompts on giant sticky notes in the rotunda of the library including: “The first book I loved…”, “Why I love reading…”, “Why I love the library…”, and “Why I love Petersburg…”
Visitors to the attraction are also encouraged to answer each of the four prompts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram by using hashtags #Lovepetersburg #Ilovethelibrary, #Ilovereading, #Iampetersburg, #Myfirstbook, #Ilovepetersburg, to tag their selfies or quotes.
The “First Love” exhibit will be opening in conjunction with Petersburg’s Friday for the Arts! at the Petersburg Library starting at six on Friday, February 13, and will be free and open to the public.
Public Art Petersburg is a non-profit organization that was established at the end of 2014 to commission, preserve, promote, and interpret public art in Petersburg. Public Art Petersburg’s adopted mission is to forge a powerful sense of place, to foster pride, and to ignite creativity through public art in Petersburg. The new organization proposes to commission first-rate works of public art, including murals and sculptures, in the next few years. During the course of 2015, Public Art Petersburg will engage in a participatory planning process that will result in a Plan for Public Art in Petersburg, and will carry out several small public art projects. The “First Love” project is the first small step in that direction.