Alexandria Community Art Library
by Roman Petruniak
What is a community art library? 
Roman Petruniak has been brought on as Guest Curator at the Torpedo Factory and commissioned to curate an exhibit for the 40th Anniversary of the Torpedo Factory Arts Center. Convergence Resident Artist, Christina Young, has had the pleasure of assisting Petruniak and his team as they build the library. Her public artwork, “Say Goodbye” will also be featured as part of the exhibit.
The Alexandria Community Art Library (ACAL) is a collective work of public art by artists Sara Black, Hideous Beast (Charlie Roderick & Josh Ippell), and Charles Robertson.
This work represents a form of Service Media. As recently defined by Stuart Keeler, Service Media is a more engaging and collaborative form of art in public space. It assumes a porousness between audience and landscape, between personal and private, even raising questions centered on what is and what is not art. Service Media artists create work through which the landscape of the city becomes a studio and viewers choose their level of engagement. The artist provides a service as a conceptual platform imbued with social exchange.
Service Media artists create work through which the landscape of the city becomes a studio and viewers choose their level of engagement. The artist provides a service as a conceptual platform imbued with social exchange.
The purpose of the ACAL is therefore to provide an innovative, though-provoking, and engaging means of everyday art service to the City of Alexandria and all communities situated therein.
Under the direction of Torpedo Factory Art Center (TFAC) curator Roman Petruniak, ACAL will be installed on the premises of the TFAC Target Gallery as a temporary public cultural institution. Artists Sara Black and Hideous Beast will construct ACAL using a variety of upcycled materials sourced from the surrounding D.C., Maryland, Virginia area. The ACAL installation will consist of a a cabinet of curiosities, a reading room, and art lending library.
ACAL questions newly emerging modes of both art making and arts funding. By no means a fully fleged public institution, yet not quite a traditional exhibition, installation or work of sculpture – ACAL values art as a type of social practice just as much as it does the vibrancy of those communities and institutions who support it.
ACAL opens May 31, 2014 at The Torpedo Factory Arts Center.
Reception and Curator’s Talk on June 12, 2014.
Roman Petruniak, Curator, Alexandria Community Art Library
Roman Petruniak is a member of InCUBATE, a research collaborative dedicated to art economies. In 2007, he co-founded a grassroots model for funding creative projects through community meals called Sunday Soup. To date, over 90 similar meal-granting initiatives have been started around the globe. In 2010, while conducing cultural policy research as a U.S. Fullbright Scholar in Kyiv, he helped design and launch BIG IDEA, one of Ukraine’s first online creative media and crowdfunding platforms. As an artist and curator, his work has been featured by a number of institutions including Eyebeam Art+Technology Center, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Smart Museum of Art, the Van Abbemuseum, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has written for CAA Reviews, Proximity Magazine, AREA Chicago, and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. He received a BA in History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, and a double MA in Modern Art History and Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 2009.
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