Dear Friends,

Whether you’re a cello player, a cello fan, or just cello curious, PVD Cello Fest is for you! Here at PPL we’re excited to again be part of PVD Cello Fest, an annual event committed to enriching the music scene in Providence by presenting concerts and educational workshops that celebrate the versatility of the cello, build new connections within the community, and foster curiosity about what is possible on the cello. We hope you’ll join us at the Library on Saturday, May 18 for one or more events in the all-day lineup of music by cellists and their friends, including a Brazilian Rhythms and Techniques for Strings workshop led by guest artist Kely Pinheiro, open to all levels of string players; followed by an old-time music jam led by local folk duo, The Vox Hunters; and individual sets by cellists Laura Cetilia, Adrienne Taylor, JY Lee, Ted Mook, Isabel Castellvi (with tabla player Kumar Das), and Kari Juusela (with djembe player Sidy Maiga). The afternoon will conclude with cello ensemble performances and a community rendition of Terry Riley’s minimalist work, In C. All the PVD Cello Fest events that take place at PPL are free and open to the public; check out the precise schedule of events at PPL here. To learn more about PVD Cello Fest, find out how you can support the festival, and get details of performances taking place at other locations, go to pvdcellofest.com!

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Kely Pinheiro

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PVD Cello Fest events at PPL will all take place on the Library’s third floor, where you can also find three wonderfully diverse yet interconnected art exhibitions on view (a fourth will open on Tuesday, May 21, more on that below): Stand to Sea features prints by Allison Bianco, Words from the Library!  is a showcase of printed works by Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., and in the Joan T. Boghossian Gallery, artists Becci Davis and Kei Soares Cobb have created a contemplative and experiential installation, From Hold to Horizon, featuring imagery, sound, video, and ritual “activations,” all inspired by the artists’ research into the 19th century whaling logs of William A. Martin, one of New England’s most prominent Black whaling ship captains. Documents detailing Captain Martin’s voyages are part of PPL’s Nicholson Whaling Collection, and Becci and Kei’s exhibition is made possible thanks to support from the Papitto Opportunity Connection, which funded digitization of the Martin documents as well as programming to highlight their significance. (Additional funding for From Hold to Horizon came from RI Humanities, and the Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading.)

From Hold to Horizon

Logbooks were where whalemen kept a record of their experiences during voyages that could stretch from months to years: they recorded daily accounts of their location; weather; illness, conflict, or death within the crew; encounters with other ships; and sightings, chases, captures (or misses) of whales, as well as the amount of oil and other resources they were able to extract after a successful hunt. While they served as business documents, and recorded factual information, they were also often repositories of thoughts and feelings, and with their handwritten pages, studded with occasional drawings, maps, and stampings of images of whales and ships, they appear vibrantly visual to our 21st century eyes, so accustomed to the smooth uniformity of digitally produced text and images.

In recent conversations with the artists, they each spoke of what struck them in first reading these accounts (as well as the accompanying documents of contracts, lists of crew and cargo, financial arrangements, etc.). Becci looked for “moments that revealed who [Martin] was as a person,” and discovered that descriptions of events often highlighted his imperturbable authority when the crew members were in conflict, resilience in the face of very difficult journeys, and deep experience as a leader. Kei noted the contrast between the mundanity of the daily recordings of weather, the reality of life within the close quarters of the ship, and the immensity of the setting of the ocean. Becci reported that she at first felt an obligation to somehow synthesize all the material as context for viewers and participants in the exhibition and activations, but came to trust that she could pull together evidence and examples from the documents and let viewers draw their own conclusions. 

She asked Kei to collaborate on the project due to their ability “to use sound to create space and evoke emotion,” recalling a previous shared project that had posited water as a space of both connection and separation - a dynamic at the heart of this collaboration as well. In addition to their art practice combining sound, choreography, and performance, Kei is trained in craniosacral therapy, among other healing practices, and their approach to the project reflects their experience working with currents in and around the body. “We evolve from an embryo, when we’re living in an oceanic state of amniotic fluid. We’re a water body,” they observe. In their therapeutic work using the horizon, the horizon becomes part of a conceptual echolocation process, letting attention go out to the horizon and come back to the body, which, they say is analogous to the experience of being on a ship, confined to a small space but within a constant environment of fluidity. In the case of whalers of color, who may have experienced capture or had the family history of being enslaved, that experience of simultaneous confinement and expansive freedom would have had special resonance, they say. “But while it resonates within the cultural context of African people enslaved in the Americas, we all come from an aquatic place. Water is a place of home, where we can’t survive because we can’t breathe. But we’re all confined - we’re all in a body, so we’re all dealing with that.”

Becci describes the environment she and Kei have created as one of rest and healing, a deep breath. She says that Kei’s soundscape, filled with sounds of breath that share a rhythm with waves, has a lot to do with it. “It feels expansive, even though it’s an interior space. All the photographic and video images of the horizon around the room line up, and when you’re under the sound shower, and Kei’s voice is leading you through the embodiment ritual, and you also hear the overlapping sounds, it’s deeply resonant.”

Both artists hope you will you come experience the installation, which is up until June 25, and that you will join them for one of the three remaining Activations (Monday, May 20, Saturday, June 1, and Monday, June 3) of the space, when the artists will offer a series of rituals and activities, in which you can participate in whatever way feels resonant and useful to you. Says Becci, “The different elements of the ritual complement each other, but not all have to be experienced.” 

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Stand to Sea, prints by Allison Bianco

Words from the Library! printed works by Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

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Finally, join us on Tuesday, May 21 at 5 pm for the opening of Teen Creative Fellow Seoyon Kim’s exhibition Return of the Celestial Visitor, a multimedia arts showcase created in response to her research in Special Collections. In this exhibition, Seoyon explores immigrant stories inspired by her family history through a mythologized narrative of the Allen family hot air balloonists, a family of aeronauts who performed exhibition balloon ascensions in 1800s Rhode Island. She is interested in reimagining the imagery of hot air ballooning and the nature of spectacle to evoke feelings of isolation and cultural disconnect common in immigrant stories. Learn more about Seoyon and her work, and register to attend here!

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We hope to see you soon!

In gratitude,



Christina Bevilacqua xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSophia Ellis

Programs & Exhibitions Director xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxCommunity Partnership Facilitator