April 2010 Archives
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
Grace in Autumn
James E. Allman
Snow globes have such a sad
reality; there’s never a moment
when a sun crests its heat
over plexi-glass ozone
to melt its delicate cold away.
It settles snow-globe-slow after a shake which scatters each particle
like the spectators at an opera house at intermission who float
back to their seats just
in time for the final act. It dusts
everything during that brief interlude
between the prolonged and deep silences
with ceaseless, long-lasting, abandoned
hope: a punctuation of each repeated fall.
When leaves drop in November there’s always a knock at the door; someone who’ll sweep them neatly
into thirty gallon, black bags pulled
taut with bright red draw-strings to be carted away the very next day.
By December, already, we anticipate the Spring.
I’ve traveled often in the woods: noted that permanent
bed of leaves cast underfoot
(the ancient giants no longer nimble at the joint don’t bend to pick them up). Come late summer they’ll still remain: deep
banks that shelter the decay.
In quiet the arbors
wait for the next season to stir the prolix of leaves
—the gossip of the trees.
I stood to watch the yard boy rake them into neat piles;
he was clearly of humble origin. He was strong and hard at work, reclaiming
each leaf from the threat of breezes. He sang gospel
at the wind.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.
He kept sweeping up decay
How precious did that grace appear
when the leaves were raked away.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
but my decay was raked
away, bundled into bags and carted away.
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
International Arts Movement believes that the pleasures of poetry ought to be brought to the public in immediate and innovative ways. To commemorate, we will highlight one poem from the Spring section of L.L. Barkat's book Inside Out each week.
The Wait
You aren't
the only one
waiting
for tongue
and cheek,
wishing
to fall asleep,
to hold
perchance
to dream.
To read more from L.L. Barkat visit:
Seedlings in Stone
Inside Out can be purchased both in print and for Kindle via Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/InsideOut-poems-L-Barkat/dp/0984350101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270676203&sr=8-1
Exciting News from New City Arts Initiative
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
Family Photos
Steve Frost
For six days
god rid himself of all
that might stir passion and on the seventh
he drank vinegar?
Oh, hopeless man.
Sour face of duty
grinning back at you.
The gods you serve: image
exchange.
If I could crawl
through this photo
and stand next to me
I would give Didymus a gift.
I offer my life.
A scandal of words
set aside and in creating I am
the Hand who places
upon your dry and parched
lips a drop of the hope
you have forgotten
you thirst for.
See in yourself, Dear
Didymus, the scandalous mirror,
the One reflected.
Inside Out by L.L. Barkat
International Arts Movement believes that the pleasures of poetry ought to be brought to the public in immediate and innovative ways. To commemorate, we will highlight one poem from the Spring section of L.L. Barkat's book Inside Out each week.
Prayer
I am
two folded wings,
waiting
for a string of air.
Drawings courtesy of Karen Eck
To read more from L.L. Barkat visit:
Seedlings in Stone
Inside Out can be purchased both in print and for Kindle via Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/InsideOut-poems-L-Barkat/dp/0984350101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270676203&sr=8-1
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
Outside Abilene
Marcus Goodyear
The land less flat than I
guessed, it’s still hairy gray
with curly pubic oak
at the 33-miles-to-go sign
where that church boy fell asleep
and killed a family of four
on their way camping.
Still alive, the land has its labors
pushing until the grain crowns
golden ripe for the combine,
elevated or spewed onto trains
running parallel to barbed wire
stretching between corrugated iron
posts that keep us company.
A sign in the dry lake:
Please Jesus send rain.
But Jesus hitched a ride
in the back of our truck
where the wind blows his dark hair
so wild no one sees him smile
except the dry prickly pear.
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
On Restlessness
David K. Wheeler
I’ve been asking myself the same question.
I know you think you want to know everything;
I would like to understand how we operate.
But I’m afraid we’ve both been losing sleep.
Come morning, we’ll step onto the floor
with no more than a yawn, stretch, or a blink.
I won’t have the time it takes to blink
before today has again stifled any question
that might hinder my progress across the floor.
And now you think that I know everything,
for the nights I spent your waking hours asleep.
This is simply the only way I can operate.
Suppose revolutions weren’t how days operate.
Suppose we relied on how often we blink
to decide the time between waking and sleep.
I don’t think we would have any question
about the sun, zoology, God, and everything.
We’ll spend hours charting stars, backs to the floor.
When you can make angels touch the floor,
there will be nothing left to manually operate.
The universe will be in control of everything,
assuring us of this as we watch the stars blink.
What makes us anxious will be out of the question;
what has kept us up will sing us back to sleep.
Until we find answers, let’s at least try to sleep.
Pull your blankets back to your bed from the floor.
If it helps, find some paper: write your question.
Mine merely asks How do you and I operate?
I wrote it when my hands were numb, I couldn’t blink,
and I was nervous for the state of everything.
There was never a time that I knew everything.
There wasn’t a night I wanted you to lose sleep.
There are some words you can say with a blink.
There are nights I wake up curled on the floor.
There are appliances that refuse to operate.
There are solutions that don’t have a question.
Today you woke with everything tossed across the floor,
from elbows thrown in your sleep—the ways you operate
that make you blink, like you answered your own question.
Call for Art: Brooklyn Jubilee Silent Auction
Why Donate Your Art?
It’s a great cause! Being a part of this auction is a chance to use your talents to help the Brooklyn community. Also, artists who donate their works will be honored as special guests at the event—this is an opportunity to network with guests and fellow artists in your community.
What Kind of Art to Donate
The pieces should be:
• Original works or original fine art prints
• 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional
• Able to hang on a wall or freestanding (on the floor or a table)
• $75 and over in value (your donation may be tax-deductible)
To find out how to donate your art, contact Michelle Han at
development@brooklynjubilee.
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
Footfall
Kristen Gaylord
“It’s more efficient,” he said,
“to not resist gravity.”
And with that pronouncement he flopped down the hill,
feet slapping, body bouncing.
I followed demurely, squandering my potential energy.
Succumbing to inherited Puritan meekness,
I pass through undisturbed space.
Muscles strain to manage my presence
as I deliberately position my feet on the stairs—
not too high, lest my heel drop heavily
but not too low, lest I scrape the edge—
with my Newtonian unseemliness.
But that day on the hill in an English summer
I learned to embrace the human.The heaviness was awkward
and my joints knocked together
when this marionette loosed her strings.
As my weighty body accelerated down the hill
on the crest of losing control,
I smiled, and disturbed.
Call for Art: Howard Roark Design
HOWARD ROARK DESIGN is a recently established architectural practice in the United Kingdom. The firm believes that architecture enjoys a unique relationship with other visual arts, and wants to encourage this bond. The practice website, which is currently under construction, will therefore include a dedicated gallery through which carefully selected artists from around the world can promote their work.
This platform will be provided free of charge. Initially however, the number of artists will be restricted to 42 with a maximum of 8 works each. Artwork will be displayed on the website at 72dpi and measure a maximum of 1000 pixels in the longest dimension.
Please be aware of the conditions for submission:
1. Submissions must be received no later than 12.00pm (GMT) on Friday 21st May.
2. Submissions should be in JPEG format, with no single file exceeding 1.5 MB.
3. Preference will be given to work that demonstrates a consistent, distinctive approach.
4. Ceramics, drawings, painting, printmaking, sculpture and modern visual arts will be considered equally and on the basis of artistic merit.
5. Work that includes the use of any objectionable medium, presentation or topic will be automatically disregarded.
6. Copyright for all the artwork selected will remain with the artists. It is a condition of submission however that the artists selected will grant HOWARD ROARK DESIGN a permanent, unlimited, royalty-free licence to reproduce and publish any piece of work hosted, at any time in connection with the activities of HOWARD ROARK DESIGN.
7. Selected artists will need to provide a second-stage submission of the following:
i. High quality images of 5-8 pieces of work, displaying the same artistic style as the work submitted for selection. This may include the same work as submitted for selection and the same images may be used if they are of sufficient quality. Three dimensional works will need a plain, white background.
ii. A biography in English of no more than 100 words. This will need to be completed in the second person, e.g. ‘John Smith is a Scottish landscape painter who works in oils’, rather than ‘I am a Scottish landscape painter and I work in oils’.
iii. The title, year of completion and medium of each piece of work.
iv. A working email address that can be made publicly available.
To submit work for selection, please send an email to info@howardroarkdesign.com, stating your full name, nationality, and attaching 3 examples of your work.
Soliloquies Exhibit at Bucknell
Makoto Fujimura: Soliloquies
in the Main Gallery
Curated by Cynthia Peltier
Organized by the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University in partnership with the Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University.
May 21 - June 25, 2010
Makoto Fujimura '83 works within the tradition of abstract painting that seeks to depict the "Sublime", and artists such as J.M.W. Turner, the English Romantic landscape painter who became known as a painter of light, spring to mind. Fujimura's work also reminds one of the atmospheric color and devotional qualities of Mark Rothko's paintings installed in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, where the viewer is asked to spend time with works that are inherently meditative and come to life slowly as one's vision adjusts to the subtle color fields. Yet we are also compelled to think of illuminated medieval manuscripts, especially when Makoto uses gold leaf as an expressive component in his paintings, as he does in Golden Fire. Gold is associated with permanence and spirituality, and in Makoto's paintings, gold takes on the properties and presence of intense light. His works also evoke the mystery and infinite qualities of the cosmos. Imagery from the NASA Hubble Space telescope helps us to access the beauty of the visible universe. One cannot help but experience that sense of cosmic space when looking at Makoto's compositions. His work also appears to be deeply rooted in Asian landscape art, and many of his paintings suggest sky, rivers, streams, rising mist and the ethereal beauty of nature.
We live in a world in which there is increasing cynicism, anxiety, and despair. Makoto Fujimura offers us, through his paintings, a place of refuge and redemption. He has drawn upon traditional painting practices he studied in Japan and merged his process with concepts of contemporary Western abstraction. Fujimura's work is devotional and is deeply rooted in faith and spirituality. He uses abstraction as visual poetry to depict the unseen and mysterious dimensions of transcendence. His works reveal themselves over time, as veils of glistening mineral pigments create monochromatic atmospheres, cascading and flowing over the paper. The paintings show their own history as layers become gradually more transparent. At times, Makoto uses calligraphic strokes, which reveal the presence of the artist's hand at work. He is not questing only for perfection in the paintings; he also sees beauty in the incomplete gesture and the fragmented shapes and brokenness shown in some of his compositions such as the falling grids in Soliloquies - Joy.
As an artist working in his studio near Ground Zero, Makoto Fujimura was deeply affected and moved emotionally by the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He is an artist who is well aware of the human suffering and prevailing hopelessness present in our world. Bur rather than despair, Makoto works with great sincerity as an artist and longs for transcendence. He humbly wishes to offer and share with us, through his paintings, his own journey towards a still place of grace, meditative beauty, hope and redemption. He invites us to contemplate and call upon our own inner awareness as we all search for deeper meaning and purpose in our lives.
IAM Artist in Istanbul
paintings
matti sirvio
ME
Welcome to the opening reception on April 30, 7p.m. Finnish Pulla (cinnamon rolls) with coffee and tea will be served!
Call for Entries - Denver's Biennial of the Americas
Call for Entry – submission due date May 16, 2010
Group Show during Denver’s inaugural Biennial of the Americas, summer 2010
Santa Fe Art District at the Core Annex Gallery.
Juried and curated by Sandra Jean Ceas.
This exhibition will join one of the Biennial’s themes, “community of a united Western Hemisphere.” The title of the group show is “Collective Singular.”
Interpret as you see fit to demonstrate a global international unity.
Request a prospectus by e-mailing sandraceas@art4him.net
Put “Collective Singular Prospectus” in the subject box.
Artists: Finding Your Place in the Cultural Landscape - Bryan Horvath/IAMokc
IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month
"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves." --T.S. Eliot
Please email submissions by April 4/21 to meaghan@internationalartsmovement.org
Rob Mathes and Micheal O'Siadhail in "At Night a Song is With Me"
A Cycle of Ballads & Psalms
For Singers, Rhythm Section & Orchestra
by Rob Mathes with original lyrics by Micheal O'Siadhail
Saturday, May 1, 2010, 8:00 P.M.
Christ Church Greenwich
24 East Putnam Avenue, Greenwich
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $15 Students, $150 Preferred Seating
(Preferred Seating includes VIP Party prior to concert at Tomes-Higgins House and Rob Mathes CD)
Tickets available online at: www.RobMathes.com
or at The Music Source in Old Greenwich 203-698-0444
A classical/pop collaboration between one of the NY Metro Area's most sought-after arrangers and composers, Greenwich's own Grammy and Emmy nominated ROB MATHES, and world renowned Irish poet MICHEAL O'SIADHAIL. Featuring Christ Church Greenwich choirs, David Fink on bass, Ben Whittman on drums, singers James Williams and Laila Biali, and The Knights orchestra from Brooklyn, made up of recent Julliard graduates.
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Presented by Conversations on Courage & Faith: Providing environments, lectures, artistic performances & spiritual experiences that will inspire & equip people to live Christianly in a postmodern world. Future Conversations on Courage & Faith events include: June 4 Archbishop Desmond Tutu - talk & luncheon
The Blog
The IAM Global blog discusses news and updates for the entire International Arts Movement.