by Susan Erhardt

Broad Stokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order) 
by Bridget Quinn

As a freshman in college taking art history, Bridget Quinn realized that she knew nothing about great female artists. She sought out an 800-page book called History of Art, and found that only 16 women were mentioned in the entire book. In Broad Strokes, Quinn writes about 15 female artists from Artemisia Gentilesch, who lived in the early 1600s, to Susan O’Malley, who died in 2015. 

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Old in Art School: a Memoir of Starting Over
by Nell Painter

Nell Painter was a professor at Princeton, a celebrated historian and the author of many books when she decided to go back to school to get a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in art at the age of 64. In this absorbing memoir, Painter describes how she rediscovered old artists in a new way and found her own way in the art world as an older black woman.

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Go Big or Go Home: Taking Risks in Life, Love and Tattooing
by Kat Von D.

Go Big or Go Home: Taking Risks in Life, Love, and Tattooing looks rather like a sketchbook filled with photos of Kat Von D.’s tattoo work, sketches and clients. It’s divided into seven sections: individuality, strength, creativity, independence, presence, wisdom and altruism. In each section, she tells personal anecdotes and explains in great detail how a tattoo design was created for various (and some famous) clients. 

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Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up
edited by Claire Wilcox & Circe Henestrosa

In 1954, following Frida Kahlo’s death at the age of 47, Diego Rivera, Kahlo’s husband and Mexican muralist, requested that her possessions be sealed in various cupboards and storerooms throughout the Blue House in Mexico City, where Kahlo was born, lived and died. In 2004, these cupboards were opened and thousands of her personal possessions were rediscovered. Making Herself Up features beautiful photos of these possessions and allows readers a window into her fascinating life.

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Susan Erhardt has been a Youth Services Librarian at Kent District Library for 26 years, and still loves to dance around with scarves at preschool story time. When she’s not at the library in her role as “Miss Susan”, she loves to scrapbook, read, travel with her family and walk her Jack Russell Terrier.