Emoji art at public library

Janesville librarian Kelly Koplen was on hand for a smiling and creative event on Thursday, July 17. With fall-like temperatures outside, about 20 children were armed with paint brushes and big imaginations inside.

 

An emoji is a colorful, simple symbol “embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages” to convey an emotion. Emojis were invented in 1982 by computer scientist Scott Fahlman, and have since evolved into online messaging, stories or even the 2017 “Emoji Movie.”

 

Koplen, the librarian in charge for the day, had two types of paint brushes, both big and small, ten different colors of paint, thick, canvas-like paper to paint on, and circular cut-outs to trace a perfect circle. The tables were covered in green plastic to protect all surfaces from messy paint drips, but just in case there were paper towels. Clear plastic cups were half filled with water to rinse brushes when needed and to add moisture to dry-ish paint. Said Koplen, “I chose this one to go with the ‘Color of our World’ theme. This kit is part of the Waseca Le Sueur Library System, there is a lot to choose from, and I thought this looked like a pretty cool activity for the kids.”

 

There were about 20 emoji pictures to choose from, one that had hearts for eyes, smiling faces, hiding behind two hands faces, one with sunglasses, surprised, laughing, confused, one with a halo. Stella Myhr, who was among the children armed with a paint brush said, “I’m doing the halo emoji, that’s the one I like the best because it’s a reflection of what I am.” Maya Olson was sitting nearby and nodded her head in agreement. Some of the children had trouble getting water into the paint so Koplen had to help, she was very busy but enjoys her job, “I love having all these kids here, there’s so much going on.”

 

When the children were done and the paint started to dry, they admired each other’s work. The yellow paint seemed to lighten the dryer it got, there were numerous nods of approval from the artists over their yellow faces. As the children started to leave Koplen began cleaning up, which wasn’t too hard because the kids didn’t leave much of a mess behind.