Are you contributing to global warming when you buy a cup of coffee?

An exhibit in the library’s Rockefeller Hall, on display in conjunction with this year's Green Cup Challenge, asks questions like this. The exhibit features a fiber art show by environmental artist Deb Cinamon-Whalen, a dedicated environmentalist who has been educating people about mountain top removal coal mining through her Healing Blankets for the Earth project.

Ms. Cinamon-Whalen’s work strives to raise awareness on social and political issues. In the current exhibit, entitled “Roadsideia,” she challenges the viewer to question his or her own role in global warming through daily activities such as buying a cup of coffee or eating a hamburger. Roadsideia, says Cinamon-Whalen, is the landscape at the side of the road. This strip of land is its own discarded  frontier, a jumble of cups, bottles, and bags creating a carnival of iconic colors and textures from fast food trash. "The strip reflects so many thoughtless acts that it compelled me to create this body of art work," she says. "The layers of fabric represent  an integration of thoughts woven into the pieces. I want people to think about the  complex relationship we all have with nature."

The exhibit includes a number of quilts, which are created from photos printed on silk and use a Japanese resist dyeing technique known as “arashi shibori.” According to the World Shibori Network, Shibori is the collective term in Japanese for tie-dye, stitch-dye, fold-dye, pole wrap-dye, etc. It is translated into English as shaped-resist dyeing, because no comparable embracing term exists in English. In Arashi Shibori (“storm” Shibori), a length of cloth is folded and wrapped around a four-meter pole. The folding method produces a storm-like effect of lines and dashes, hence the name.

Cinamon-Whalen is a member of the Green Artists League, involved with the Carbon Coalition, and co-chair of the East Kingston Energy Commission. For more information on Ms. Cinamon-Whalen and her work, visit her web site.

The exhibit will run from January 29 through February 25, in conjunction with this year’s Green Cup Challenge.

For further information on the exhibit, please contact Jacquelyn Thomas, Academy Librarian, at (603) 777-3328.