501-918-3025
calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
Art Happenings around the Central Arkansas Library System
The bronze sculpture Connections was commissioned from artist Michael Warrick for the opening of the Maumelle Library in 1996. Over the years, the sculpture was moved from the front of the building to the back. Now, it sits inside the library next to the large front-facing windows.
Connections has a new patina and solid limestone base. Take a close look and you will see objects representing the letters of the alphabet creating the framework of the sculpture. According to the artist, the alphabet is our connection to the library and the library is our connection to the world.
Warrick was awarded the Arkansas Arts Council’s 2020 Living Treasure Award.
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Adaja Cooper’s new painting titled Ignite your Imagination was recently unveiled at the CALS Williams Library on Chester Street in Little Rock. CALS Art Administrator Colin Thompson said, “I really liked the vibrancy of Adaja’s mural at the 7th street Mural project and felt she was good choice for a painting at the Williams Library that celebrates reading and learning.”
Cooper is an award-winning twenty-year-old artist from Little Rock. At the age of seventeen, Cooper began experimenting with bright colors and immersive portraits, and she has been in love with painting ever since.
During the summer of 2017, Cooper was accepted into Arkansas Governor’s School, where she further developed her skills with acrylics and oils. Along with winning multiple state competitions for art, including from the AYAA (Arkansas Young Artists Association), she has been to national competitions with her paintings. In 2019, she won third place in the painting category at the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics in Detroit. Her art has also been published in multiple books and magazines.
Cooper uses her experience as a Black woman living in America as inspiration for her art, producing work with Black people as her muses. Her subjects typically have bold and expressive facial expressions, or calm expressions with vivid background.
