Art in the Park features new events

By Zachary Marano

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Ironwood — Art in the Park will return to Miner’s Memorial Heritage Park on Friday as part of the Emberlight Festival. In addition to the art installations in the park, there will be performance art and book club events in the coming weeks.

The first performance infusion will be “Miles on Mozart” at site 18 in the park. At the event, Emberlight Festival’s artistic director Miles Mykkanen will play recordings of his favorite classical music as well as highlights from his upcoming recital at the Historic Ironwood Theater, which will be on Aug. 28.

At its first meeting on July 19, the Emberlight Festival’s book club will discuss “Braiding Sweetgrass,” a nonfiction book published in 2013 by the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer.

According to the publisher, Kimmerer argues in the book “that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.”

Karen Mallum, the book club’s coordinator, said Kimmerer is a member of the Potawatomi Nation and that she approaches science through that unique lens.

“It’s all about inclusion and diversity at Emberlight — including different cultures and different art forms, and trying to give them a voice as well. That’s why this book was chosen,” Mallum said.

The book club will meet at 6 p.m. on July 19, also at site 18. The discussion will be facilitated by Ironwood native Matt Mallum, Karen’s son.

The book club will meet again on Aug. 16 to discuss the historical fiction book “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks.

Karen Mallum said the book club is similar but unrelated to the Ironwood Diversity Matters Reading Group. She said that the subject matter should appeal to members of that reading group, which will not reconvene this summer.

Interested parties can sign up at Ironwood’s Carnegie Public Library or call library director Lynne Wiercinski at 906-932-4789. Registration is limited to 10 people. Print editions and audiobooks of “Braiding Sweetgrass” can be checked out from the library.