Exhibit @ City Hall In September Celebrates National Literacy Month

Providence, RI - The City of Providence, Mayor Angel Taveras and the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism invite you to the Gallery at City Hall to view a new exhibit entitled: Lessons from the Experts: A Celebration of National Literacy Month. The show features How-to books created by preschoolers, a selection of photographs from Susan Duca's Stop.Run.Play. series and watercolorist Susan Medyn's imaginative watercolor paintings. The exhibit demonstrates young children's ingenuity and the lessons that they have taught an older audience in both concrete and abstract ways. The show will be on view in the gallery from August 28 to September 24. There will be a closing reception for the artists on Wednesday, September 19 from 5pm to 7pm.

Ready to Learn Providence, in collaboration with an early childhood teaching seminar, initiated the How-to Books project. Preschoolers who were enrolled in this project chose a task they felt they were an expert in and created an illustrated book describing how to perform the task. With titles such as "How to Fly like Superman" and "How to be a Big Brother," the books highlight important lessons about creativity and caring for others.

This free-spirited creation can also be found in the photographic work of Susan Duca. In 2000, Duca traveled to Florence, Italy to document the lives of schoolchildren, especially their free-spirited play. "At this early age the children are less guarded, less self-conscious, more open, hidden agendas absent," says Duca. "My goal was to capture their spirit."

Another artist inspired by children's imagination is Susan Medyn, whose whimsical watercolors are often compared to children's book illustrations. "I became fascinated with creating diminutive universes in which I could design more playful harmonious worlds," says Medyn. Her work depicts concrete scenes from adult life through fantastical creatures in bright colors. Medyn's work shows the importance of imagination, one that is best seen through the eyes of a child.

The exhibit celebrates the importance of lifelong learning and the importance of collaboration in the learning process. These lessons related to imagination ("How to Fly Like Superman") and caring for others ("How to be a Big Brother") reflect the importance of learning from peers and young people. Commemorating National Literacy Month, the show demonstrates how quality early childhood education can cement this commitment to lifelong collaborative learning.

About Ready To Learn Providence:
Ready to Learn Providence aims to close the gap between low-income and other students in Providence by providing quality early childhood education to all students. By partnering with adults who are significant in young children's lives - teachers, parents and health care providers - Ready to Learn Providence aims to give all students a healthy start as they enter the educational system in the City. The How-to books project resulted from a collaboration with a Harvard seminar entitled "Making Learning Visible." From this, students and teachers alike collaborated in order to create the books demonstrating their expertise. Public officials such as Mayor Angel Taveras and Rhode Island Comissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Deborah Gist were inspired by the project and have created their own How-to books, which were featured in the show "Learning from the Experts" at the Providence Children's Museum.

About The Artists:
Susan Duca earned a BFA in photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Following positions as a photo researcher at Magnum Photos and an associate editor at Aperture in New York, she moved to Rhode Island and continued to pursue her photographic work as an artist, photo editor and travel photographer. The Stop. Run. Play. exhibition was featured in the Newport Art Museum in 2011. Her work has been included in juried group shows in New York and Boston as well as part of private collections in the United States and Europe.

Susan Medyn is a self-taught artist who began painting whimsical watercolors 35 years ago in ink and watercolor. Her paintings, inspired by everyday events, feature fantastic flora and fauna in vivid colors. Having worked with children, Medyn has used their imaginative ways as inspiration for her work. Her work has been called "primitive" and "visionary" and is often compared to that of Henri Rousseau and Paul Klee. She currently resides in Tiverton, RI.

About The Gallery:
The Gallery at City Hall offers exhibit space to Providence artists and organizations who may not have permanent gallery representation. Showing a broad range of work, this venue celebrates the cultural and artistic diversity found in the Providence community. The gallery is open to the public during normal City Hall hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, with hours extended until 7:00 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday of each month.