Visual art and works of literature are not far from one another. Both take their audience to new worlds, new points of view, and new ways of thinking. “Literally” is an exciting new exhibit that gives visual artists the opportunity to reinterpret famous literary works to showcase at the Arts Council’s Bower-Suhrheinrich Foundation Gallery in Downtown Evansville.
Registered artists will select a literary work from a predetermined list created by the Arts Council — check out the list below. Despite the exhibit name, artists do not have to interpret their assignment literally. Submissions may be created in any media, 2D or 3D, and may be literal or metaphorical representations of the assigned literary work.
The deadline to register is Tuesday, Feb. 21. The assignment list will be opened to artists at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22. To ensure there are no repeated entries, when an artist chooses a literary assignment, it will be removed from the list.
Artists will have until April 15 to complete the work. The exhibit opens Thursday, April 20 and runs until Thursday, May 25. A public artists reception is scheduled for 5:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday, April 29.
Interested artists can register online here or register with a paper entry here.
Important Dates
- Feb. 21: Registration Deadline (midnight)
- Feb. 22: Literature selection form goes live (6 p.m.)
- April 14 & April 15: Artwork dropoff (10 a.m. – 2 p.m.)
- April 20-May 25: Exhibit dates
- April 29: Artist reception (5:30 – 7 p.m.)
- May 26: Artwork pickup (10 a.m. – 2 p.m.)
Lists of “Literally” books
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, 1988, nonfiction
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, 2016, fiction
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, 1980, nonfiction
- A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver, 2013, poetry
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, 1943, fiction
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, 2014, fiction
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman, 2001, fiction
- Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945, fiction
- Beloved by Toni Morrison, 1987, fiction
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015, nonfiction
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932, fiction
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, 1970, nonfiction
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, 1951, fiction
- Circe by Madeline Miller , 2018, fiction
- Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, 1848, nonfiction
- Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, 1986, fiction
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, 1968, fiction
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, 2009, fiction
- Epic of Gilgamesh by N/A, 2100 BC, fiction
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 1953, fiction
- Fast Food Nation by Eric Schossler, 2001, nonfiction
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, 1972, nonfiction
- Florida by Lauren Groff, 2018, short stories
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818, fiction
- Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, 1947, fiction
- Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, 1960, fiction
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2006, fiction
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 1981, fiction
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000, fiction
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, 1969, nonfiction
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1966, nonfiction
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, 2017, nonfiction
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, 1651, nonfiction
- Lord of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954, fiction
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005, fiction
- Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, 1955, nonfiction
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859, nonfiction
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac, 1957, fiction
- Perks of Being a Wall Flower by Stephen Chbosky, 1999, fiction
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2000, nonfiction
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813, fiction
- Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, 1984, fiction
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, 1922, fiction
- Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, 1971, nonfiction
- The Art of War by Sun Zi, 500 BC, nonfiction
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, 1963, fiction
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 1982, fiction
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, 2003, fiction
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, 1947, nonfiction
- The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, 1954, nonfiction
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, 1968, nonfiction
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, 1964, fiction
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985, fiction
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, 1949, nonfiction
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, 1991, fiction
- The Iliad by Homer, 800 BC, fiction
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, 2010, nonfiction
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, 2003, fiction
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, 1948, fiction
- The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, 1979, nonfiction
- The Shining by Stephen King, 1977, fiction
- The Stranger by Albert Camus, 1942, fiction
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, 1844, fiction
- The Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, 1986, fiction
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, 1776, nonfiction
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, 2016, nonfiction
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, 1924, poetry
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854, nonfiction
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, 1963, fiction
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith, 2000, fiction
