PUBLIC ART. PUBLIC BOOKS.

When you’re making your way through life, there’s a big difference between being told where to go and having the freedom to ask for directions when you need them. Part of that difference lies in being empowered to ask questions in the first place.

 

Phil O’Malley is the artist behind The Public Collection’s book share station at Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center, which takes the form of two large, colorful question marks, each about eight feet tall, with 10 built-in bookshelves set artfully into its surfaces. O’Malley’s piece—“The Answer is in the Question”—began as a question of its own in O’Malley’s mind: How best to fit the design of the piece to the neighborhood center’s purpose and services?

 

The Answer Is in the Question

“It’s here to help people find answers,” O’Malley said. “And a lot of times the answers can actually be found in asking the right questions. Or teaching people how to ask the right questions, or where to go. All of those things add up. So what we came to was this idea that the answer is often in the question. It’s amazing then how way leads onto way. You know that poem by Robert Frost?”

 

Frost’s poem—“The Road Not Taken”—is well known, or at least its concept is: the effect of a single decision on the speaker’s life course. Its last three lines are especially familiar:

 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

But as with any seemingly familiar road, close inspection of the poem reveals forgotten details—like the line that stands out to O’Malley: “Yet knowing how way leads onto way / I doubted if I should ever come back.”

           

“If people could realize,” O’Malley explained, imagining a hypothetical searcher, “that if I could just get the answer to this one question, then maybe that answer will bring me to another one, and another one, and so on. We have people who are trying to navigate their lives and figure out how to put them back together, and that’s what the Mary Rigg Center helps them do.”

  

Literacy Is an Answer

Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center is on the west side of Indianapolis, just south of I-70. While renewal efforts have raised incomes in other neighborhoods near downtown Indianapolis, many on the west side continue to struggle with declining prospects and unemployment. The center empowers individuals by serving as a resource for day-to-day life. And that power can begin with something as simple as asking a question.

 

The Public Collection is a group of artist-designed book share stations installed in public spaces around Indianapolis. Each book share station holds a varied selection of books for diverse audiences and age groups. Passersby can borrow a book for free and return it at their leisure. No signup or other registration is required. The program operates on the honor system.

 

With its readily available books, free of charge or commitment, The Public Collection is fitted as neatly to Mary Rigg’s mission as O’Malley’s question marks are fitted to the center’s design and décor. (O’Malley pointed out how the curve of the question mark is designed to echo the curve of the center’s arched entryway.)

 

“We’re promoting the idea,” O’Malley said, “that literacy sometimes really is the answer.”

 

A Mission of Education

While Mary Rigg does play a big role in providing the neighborhood some basic needs—a food pantry and a resource center with computers, phones, and faxes—80 to 90 percent of their resources are spent on education: adult education, vocational education, before-and-after-school youth programs, and a summer day camp. Kimberly Coveney, Mary Rigg’s director of development and communication, agrees that The Public Collection extends the center’s mission in an important way.

 

“To have material like this available, easily accessible, free of charge, enables the people that we work with to broaden their minds and their knowledge,” Coveney said. “It fits very well with what we do as part of our day to day work in the community.”

 

Like O’Malley, Coveney is excited to have the stations up and running, and is looking forward to seeing how the community uses them.

 

“In our youth program, we have a few kids who just devour books, so my guess is we’ll be hearing things like, ‘Where’s the next book in this series?’ and ‘Where’s that book?’ and ‘I want this.’

 

“It’s going to be fun to see how it develops.”

 

Beyond the Public Library

The Indianapolis Public Library is a partner to The Public Collection and has assumed responsibility for providing and replenishing all of the books. It has a branch directly across from the neighborhood center and often collaborates on programs. While The Public Collection’s mission is similar to a library’s, O’Malley sees The Public Collection as an exciting and valuable departure.

 

As a child, O’Malley went to the library regularly with his own family—he was one of six children—and he recalled the delight he felt at being able to just walk up to a shelf and take off a book, and know that he could take it home.

 

“I thought about that when I was trying to come up with this concept,” he said. “I put myself in the place of the single mom or the single dad, or the mother and father both working, and wanting to read something to their child at night—but the reality of pulling into the library, and going in and getting the book and checking it out and getting back in the car and getting where you’re going—it is an extra five or six steps. To be able to pull up here and just run in and grab one or two books makes a big difference.”

 

The Public Collection is a public art and literacy project developed by Rachel M. Simon with support from the Herbert Simon Family Foundation. Its goals are to improve literacy, foster a deeper appreciation for the arts, and raise awareness for educational justice in our community.