Red Wheelbarrow 2017 Launch and Reading

What a transporting evening of poetry and prose at the Launch Reading for the Red Wheelbarrow 2017 National Edition last night! So excited to be with curator and artist Sara Cole and editor Ken Weisner holding my very own copy of Red Wheelbarrow 2017!

The book, the painting, the artist, the curator and the microphone, warming up and ready to go!

Joe Miller of Works/San José hosting the launch and reading.

Rob Pesich of the Poetry Center San José and Ken Weisner, editor of the Red Wheelbarrow and a faculty member of the Creative Writing Department at DeAnza College.

Artist and poet Sara Cole was the Art Curator for this beautiful edition of the Red Wheelbarrow , she selected works curated for an upcoming show Repository, a group show of Bay Area Women.

Congratulations to Partridge Boswell from Vermont who read his poem “Pop a Wheelie” which took 1st place in the inaugural Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize!

Lauren Goldstein, from New Mexico (Poetry Prize Finalist) reading “Elegy with Feathers”.

I’m happy to report that poetry is alive and well, heartbreaking, hilarious, tender and kicking! Go get some! Go write some!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¡Red Wheelbarrow Book Launch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How exciting…. the book launch for the national edition of the Red Wheelbarrow is this Tuesday, December 12 from 7-9 pm at Works/San José, 365 Market Street, San Jose, California!  Doors open at 6:30pm and performance begins at 7:00pm.
Free appetizers and affordable wine, beer and soda. Suggested admission $2 – but no one will be turned away.

Books will be available for purchase with my painting Magnolia Tea II smack-dab on the cover!  This volume of art, poetry and prose was compiled by Ken Weisner who invited Sara Cole to curate the art which includes work by:

Pilar Agüero-Esperanza
Jhina Alvarado-Morse
Natalya Burd
Marie Cameron
Sara Cole
Kim Frohsin
Kristin Lindseth-Rivera
Mila Libman Starbird
Margaret Wherry

Featured readers from the new issue of Red Wheelbarrow and from the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize will include:

Len Anderson
Rose Black
Dave Denny
Alex Giardino
Rosie King
Lita Kurth
Peter Nash
Dion O’Reilly
Lisa Allen Ortiz
McTate Stroman II
David Allen Sullivan
Aimee Suzara
Robert Sward
Cynthia White

In celebration of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize:

Partridge Boswell, from Vermont
Gary Young
Lauren Goldstein, from New Mexico
Susan Kelly-Dewitt

womanKind Reception

The womanKIND reception was a warm-hearted gathering on a very cold night at the Citadel Gallery in San Jose. The exhibition, a Cole / Drews Watkins project was held in support of the YWCA Silcon Valley – eliminating racism, empowering women! Last day to see the show is Monday, December 19th from 12 to 6 pm.

Power houses Susan Drews Watkins and Sara Cole who put together the show welcoming us all to the exhibition.

Tanis Crosby, CEO of the YWCA Silicon Valley speaking eloquently about the importance of being there for each other as women, as community. Very inspirational!

                             

We were touched by the powerful spoken word poetry of Diana D’Angelo, Sara Cole and Ashlie Andrade.  Check back soon, I’ll be posting video links to these readings!

Many of the exhibiting artists were present, here I am with my floral paintings.

Jhina Alvarado with her Mixed media encaustics.

Diana D’Angelo and her mixed media paintings.

Ashlie Andrade with Sara Cole’s paintings on paper.

Sara Cole with her self portraits.

Susan Drews Watkins and friends.

Susan Drews Watkins sculpture, metal, water and glass.

Joy Redick and her watercolors.

Lisa Renée Falk and her Citrus Dress – glass, silk and plastic citrus bags.

Lisa Renée Falk and her Citrus Dress, glass, silk and plastic citrus bags.

Trace Galbraith and her slumped glass work.

My Birds and Teacups cards.

Tableart by Henri Mansfield Herns.

Work by Tableart, Gutfreund, Cole, Cameron

       

        

Marti Somers Squirrel over Tumbleweed, Mixed media on panel.

Karen Gutefreund‘s Perpetual Motion,  mixed media on canvas. Karen had been to the show early in the afternoon before racing off to Arc in San Francisco for the opening of the F*ck U! exhibition reception!

Brigitte Carnochan‘s  Pot of Daffodils , silver gelatin print.

Jhina Alvarado’s Alberts, mixed media encaustic paintings.

Jamie Woods, YWCA Silicon Valley’s Associate Director of Philanthropy and Sara Cole.

It was an honor to meet Tanis Crosby and help to support the YWCA Silicon Valley for all that they do – eliminating racism and empowering women! I hope we’re able to raise lot’s of money with this show for the important work that they do in our community!

womanKIND

I’m so honored to be taking part in womanKIND, an upcoming exhibition uniting women, creativity and community by Cole / Drews Watkins Projects, in support of the YWCA Silicon Valley – eliminating racism, empowering women!

womanKIND will be held at the Citadel Gallery & Studios, 199 Martha Street, San Jose, California and will be open to the public December 16-19. Tanis Crosby, CEO of YWCA Silicon Valley, will open the reception to be (December 17, 6-9 pm) and there will be a spoken word performance at 8 pm!

Friday December 16th 4pm to 8pm

Saturday December 17th 11 to 3pm, 6pm to 9pm (reception)

Sunday December 18th 12pm to 8pm

Monday December 19th 12pm to 6pm

For more information about the womanKIND exhibition and all the great artists involved, please check out the following link: www.saravcoleart.com/cdwproject I’ll be showing a number of my Birds and Teacups paintings (and selling cards as well).

By the way, I’m seriously in love with that dog by Jhina Alvarado!

Anne & Mark’s Art Party Closing Bash

OK – it’s been over a week now and I really should have had this post up long ago but I’ve been suffering from an art hangover like you wouldn’t believe (unless of course, you were at the party)!

In fact, this is what the inside of my brain looks like now – a cacophony of pattern, lights and color like this giant kaleidoscope by Ned Greene!

Or this detail from Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian’s gouache Die Gesteze der Stukturen!

And here are the synapses of my grey matter firing in pops of dreamy florasl and dandelion puffs of exploding fractals seen here in Carrie Lederer’s Clear Night!

The computer of my mind is overloaded and is threatening to crash (detail from Karen Gutfruend’s CTRT ALT DEL)!

And my dreams are haunted by a blind white rabbit, thank you Tulio Flores and Asiel Design….so here we go – one more trip down the rabbit hole before I move on!

First of all I’d like to thank everyone who made it out to see my Florilegia and shared with me their response to the work – this input is simply invaluable to an artist  and means do much!  Thank you , thank you , thank you!

And then there were the visitors who seemed like they were exertions of my paintings!

So Fabulous!

And then there were my art crushes…..like this discarded cigarette packaging piece by Robert Larson.  He was able to take something dirty and disgusting and transform it into something sublime!  I smelled it too  – not a hint of nicotine or anything else. Pure alcmemy!

I also adored this woman’s torso fashioned from safety pins, Lacey by Bob Marzewski, like little stars or snowflakes tenuously welded together.

Lorraine Lawson’s missed media paintings,  Bob Marzeweski’s torsos and Tessie Barrera-Scharaga’s Matrix of Chaos, an installation piece of multiple images of the Virgin and kneeling benches.

So easy to get lost wandering through the maze of galleries – at least if you’re doing it right.

Kristin Lindseth’s prints.

Gianfranco Paolozzi’s Journal, enamel, robber paint, glue on recycled role of paper.

Will Marino’s Paradigm Shift , wound and folded paper

Patrick Hofmeister’s Aware.

Malia Landis’s IIiima in Kiawe.

Marianne Lettieri’s Memory Bank.

Lynn Dao’s Domestic Apocalypse

Love the simplicity of this delicate bowl  against a simple grey background in this oil painting by Deborah Trilling.

John Hylton’s Moon Watcher, canvas, paint wood.

Monica Van den Dool’s Behold in front of Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian’s gouache  Die Gesteze der Stukturen.

Wesley T. Wright – California Coyote – Stoneware, underglaze, glaze, concrete, steel in front of Nanette Wylde’s monoprints.

It was such a delight to meet Natalia Bertotti and Michael Garlington who collaborate on intensely dark, curious and magical images that somehow tap into some cultural core of ours – Grimm’s American fairytale crossed with something ripped out of the headlines of an old newspaper – or rather the stories that was never fit to print or maybe a precursor to a circus side show. They photographed Susan Sarandon in amazing paper dresses here’s a link to this process.

          

Love the flask action!

I’m not even sure what I’m looking at here, but it feels like a pierced and leaking Padora’s Box emptying out into a sea of melting glaciers – a big old barrel of global warming by Briget Henry with Ann Altstatt. Feel free to go with another interpretation!

Grant Wells’s  Ocean Structure 1, pigment transfer on canvas.

Tim Craighead’s oil and alkyd on linen, Without Constantini.

Adon Vaneziano’s sculptures.

Brian Taylor’s  Changing Nature, photography.

Dotti Cichon with her installation she collaborated on with Jamila Rufaro.

Pantea Karimi and her paper vovelles.

With Lorraine Lawson and her mixed media paintings.

Sara Cole’s Forgotten Women 2 , acrylic, graphite, gesso on paper.

Oleg Lobykin’s bronze Flex Cube.

Ann Sconberg’s  photography,Thirteen One and Two.

Quinn Peck’s archival ink jet print on fabric.

Betsy Braun-Kernaghan and her mixed media work.

Michelle Longosz photographs.

A detail from Jenifer Renzel’s The Contraption.

Vanessa Callanta’s self portrait.

Marc D’Estout’s A Briefcase of Puppetry  (detail)  found objects, fabricated steel, paint, patina.

Joe Uglyeye – Personal Demons – spray paint, screenpaint, acrylic on birch panel.

Denise Harris-Olenak’s Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, photographic plates on copper and wood.

Beyond the visual art, the big draw go the Closing Bash was the fabulous runway put on by Pivot:  The Art of Fashion!  The lights the crowds, the fantastic music and and even more fantastic fashion! Above are Charlotte Kruk’s  Bossa Nova Bombshells made from recycled Ferrara Pan Chewy Lemonhead & Friends, Lemonhead, CherryHead, Grapehead wrappers!

And her Godiva coat!

                         

Tullio Flores

Lace design work.

                          

Tulio Flores

                          

                         

IB Bayo

                          

Rose Sellery (left) Charlotte Kruk’s Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, recycled Tiffany bags and chandelier pieces (middle) Katraa (right)

Rose Sellery

MC Kim Luke thanking Pivot Oraganizers Tina Brown, Rose Sellery and designers, Charlotte Kruk, Tulio Flores, Katraa, Sudnya Shroff, Ruby Roxanne, Ricochet, IB Bayo and Many others…

Food truck fun.

Rose Sellery’s designs and sculpture

D’Arcy Couture models in front of Khaled Akil’s Requiem for Syria.

D’Arcy Couture.

Model Izzabelly Santos in IB Bayo.

Pivot MC, Kim Luke in front of

Sunya Shroff’s designs and painting and models in a moment of pre-composure

Pivot models in front of art.

Jessica Hilltout’s phtographs of handmade balls.

Pillar Aguero-Esparza’s multicultural Crayolas on paper.

Pivot model in front of Miguel Machuca’s Orchestrated Religion.

Butterfly model wafting by Teresa Cuniff’s There and Back

Glowing butterfly floating by Alan Silver’s oils on canvas.

Finally alighting on chair sculpture.

The morning after….picking up my work there are still a few remnants from the Art Party – Bill Gould’s sculpture tinkling overhead and the fabulous murals painted with Empire 7 glowing in the early morning sun. Farewell Wonderland, you will haunt my dreams until the next occasional and irrational art fest! Thanks to all involved with Anne and Mark’s Art Party – you’re the best!

Update – I’m delighted to hear that Anne Sconberg and Mark Henderson have just been presented with the Creative Impact Award for their extraordinary vision and hard work with Anne & Mark’s Art Party!  So well deserved!

In case you’re still game for more and missed previous Art Party posts, here are the links:

Tower of Bauble

Angels Among Us

Down the Rabbit Hole

Anne & Mark’s Art Party 2014