Two Art Exhibitions To Open This Friday at BPL

The Birmingham Public Library invites you a special opening reception for two new exhibitions: Electromagnetic Field Gothic by Ryan Meyer and Portraits of Ghosts by Thomas Rooney. Join us this Friday, May 9, at the Central Library to meet the artists and explore their thought-provoking work. The reception will be held from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Fourth Floor Gallery and is free and open to the public.

These exhibitions are part of BPL’s Art for Everyone series, which highlights the work of emerging and established artists who live and work in Alabama. They are made possible by a grant awarded to the Friends Foundation of BPL by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

About the Exhibitions

Ryan Meyer, Negative Field

Electromagnetic Field Gothic is a conceptual typeface project by artist and designer Ryan Meyer. What started as a mark-making style that visualizes the pervasive electromagnetic field, became a system of letterforms and symbols displayed as type specimens on wall objects. The drawings are made with bleach, staples, and graphite on black paper or fabric. As the bleach oxidizes the black dyes, it creates a chemical burn aesthetic that references a symbolic “burning sensation” from EMF exposure. For several years Meyer has been building a visual vocabulary around the themes of EMFs and artificial light. He is interested in the way they are thoroughly woven into both technological and the degradation of human and environmental health.

Electromagnetic Field Gothic will be on view in the Fourth Floor Gallery from May 9 to July 26, 2025.

Thomas Rooney, Dutch Girls Are Hypnotic Lizards

Portraits of Ghosts features new works by up-and-coming artist Thomas Rooney, who works in the languages of overpainting, printmaking, and painting in order to explore the many facets of the human experience. According to Rooney, Portraits of Ghosts “is an exploration of interconnectedness and interdependence. I am interested in how the majority of oneself and one’s personality, their history and the consequences of their decisions and actions, is unobservable. Representing these invisible qualities, my work is an illustration of and metaphor for people’s interior worlds and intangible past actions, history, and relationships. Being an impression of an individual’s consciousness imprinted on a time and place, the word ghost serves as a descriptor for the unseen effects we cause and connections we develop and maintain.” 

Portraits of Ghosts will be on view in the First Floor Gallery from May 9 to July 26, 2025.

About the Artists

Ryan Meyer was raised between the suburban Deep South and the road. He received his MFA from the University of California at Davis and has shown work nationally and internationally. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media & Graphic Design at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His art practice is research-based and is constructed from diverse topics and experiences. He often uses various forms of storytelling, data visualization, and graphic design to examine themes of technology, ecology, health, decay, ruderality, and the Anthropocene. Website: ryanmeyerart.com / Instagram: @ryanmeyerart.

Thomas Rooney was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, where he currently resides. He received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2023 Rooney was the recipient of the John Dillon Scholarship in Printmaking and the Virgina Rembert Liles Scholarship at UAB. Portraits of Ghosts is Rooney’s first solo show. Website: tprooneyart.com / Instagram: @tomporoonopolis.

By Margaret Splane, Library Assistant III