Celebrate 120 Years of Hudson Park Library!

Join us for Hudson Park Library’s 120th Anniversary Community Night, a festive, drop-in evening of creativity, history, and community. Enjoy light refreshments and a looping archival photo presentation highlighting the Library’s 120-year history.

What to Expect

• Live jazz music by the Rocco John Group.
• Bespoke typewriter poetry—share a word, feeling, or idea and receive a custom poem on the spot by Mya Matteo Alexice.
• Color our neighborhood with original drawings of Hudson Park and local landmarks by artist Lily Annabelle.
• Historic letterpress printing with Dikko Faust, using 1800s wood type on a press the same age as the Library.
• Make-your-own books with artist and author Esther K Smith—fold, stitch, draw, and write.

Combine your coloring, poem, and prints into a handmade book, or simply enjoy individual activities, the music, and the celebratory atmosphere—drop in for a few minutes or stay all evening.

Born and raised in NYC’s Greenwich Village, Rocco J. Iacovone is a composer and performer known for original, melodically grounded music that balances structure with adventurous improvisation. A strong improviser, he often uses improvisation as a core compositional tool. He has studied with jazz legends Lee Konitz and Sam Rivers, as well as disciples of Nadia Boulanger, shaping a distinctive blend of “in” and “out” sensibilities that has earned critical praise. A longtime teaching artist, Rocco leads jazz and improvisation residencies and holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from Hunter College.

For this performance, he will be joined by Jack DeSalvo on guitar and Philip Sirois on bass.

Mya Matteo Alexice is a Black and white doctoral student. A Cave Canem fellow studying Black romantic life, they are the author of A Shape We’ve Yet to Name (2024) and The Limerence Object (2025). Matteo’s poems can be found in publications such as Pleiades, swamp pink, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, diode, and elsewhere. They’ve received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center, and more.

Lily Annabelle is a NYC-based illustrator. She draws historically, architecturally, and culturally significant New York facades to bring awareness to the preservation efforts of the city's heritage. Her work is proudly cherished by over 100 New York City establishments and 30+ Broadway productions. Having recently concluded a successful exhibition at the Knickerbocker Hotel featuring famed Broadway Theaters, Lily has expanded her footprint to London’s West End.

Esther K Smith wrote and designed How to Make Books, Making Books with Kids, and several other book arts books with major publishers. She fell in love with an 1874 type catalog, William H. Page's Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders &c. She worked with two copies of it at New York Public Library Rare Books Room, and published a reprint with Rizzoli. Esther also prints and publishes slapdash Risograph books as EK Smith Museum, Kreate'N Kitsch'N, and her new poetry imprint Klytemnestra Press. Esther loves showing people how to make books. She taught Instant Artist Books at Cooper Union for more than 15 years and has also taught at Princeton, SVA, the Center for Book Arts, and universities and book arts centers across the United States, as well as in London, Berlin, and Canada.

Dikko Faust will help you print a keepsake from 1800s wood type on a Kelsey press that's the same age as Hudson Park Library. Dikko teaches letterpress printing at the School of Visual Arts. Letterpress is a relief printing process that uses rollers, ink, metal, wood type, woodcuts, and engravings. Then the press pushes paper onto the inked surfaces and Voila! You have a print. Dikko Faust founded Purgatory Pie Press, which prints artist books and limited editions, on view in the NYPL gallery at Hudson Park Library. Dikko works with artistic director Esther K Smith at Purgatory Pie Press. They have collaborated with more than 100 other artists and writers. They have also held exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and London's Victoria & Albert Museum.

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