Events Calendar

Visitors of all ages are invited to come by the Bubbler Room and work with TetraPAKMAN on engaging, tactile art-making out of recycled materials. Whether we’re building a large-scale, community-generated social sculpture or creating the unthinkable through cardboard construction we need your help!

Some of his ongoing projects include painting bedsheets for a upcoming installation, creating messages out of old keyboard keys or using everyday objects like lids, boxes, and twist-ties to make larger than life sculpture forms.

Many of TetraPAKMAN’s projects scale up or down based on age and timeframe — so come by for 5 minutes, an hour, or more and we will be Doing Something. We’d love your creative additions as he works to transform the Bubbler Room at Central Library!

About the Artist: TetraPAKMAN is a Madison-based artist who has long considered concepts around conservation, and often creates using repurposed/recycled materials. TetraPAKMAN’s practice is focused on community-generated social sculpture projects. His work is about the future, and the challenges we face today as a community. He explores the role of art as a mechanism to generate awareness about the climate crisis.

Presented in partnership with Beyond the Page.

Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.

One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing.

Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and "Christian." But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.

Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.