Tag: Portland (OR)

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Lightship Press Poet Red O’Hare at Art At The Cave on March 9, 2023

February 22, 2023

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Red O’Hare

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, PRO-CHOICE,

ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

7 pm

Thursday, March 9

Art at the Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

$5 Suggested donation

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Red O’Hare is a West Coast-based Jewish-American Poet. Her debut book of poetry, Seaglass Strange, was published late last year by Lightship Press. She was born during the Reagan administration to the child of Jewish immigrant Carnies and that of stalwart Presbyterian missionaries. She believes in boots and ghosts. Her dog is named after a Doctor Who character, but you have to guess which one. Red has been writing and performing poetry since she was 15 years old in California’s San Fernando Valley.  She’s competed in poetry slams but has never won, and has been featured at Wordlights, The Last Stand at Wildwood Saloon, The Nest, Portland Poetry Slam, and The Crow’s Nest, to name a few. She has also performed at Studio Morey, Fused Creative’s show Leave Me On Read, Telltale PDX’s show This Is What We Need, The Brewery Artist’s Lofts, The Anna Broome Room, and KBOO Radio’s Talking Earth poetry series, hosted by Dan Raphael. Red’s spoken word album is available at redohare.bandcamp.com.

Connect with Red on her website: www.redohare.com or follow her on Instagram at @mizredohare or on Facebook at facebook.com/mizredohare.

Learn more about Lightship Press here: https://www.lightshippress.com/

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.

As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring David McIntire at Art At The Cave on November 10, 2022

October 26, 2022

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Featuring David McIntire
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, PRO-CHOICE,
ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

7 pm
Thursday, November 10

Art at the Cave
108 E Evergreen Blvd
Vancouver, WA 98660
https://artatthecave.com

$5 Suggested donation

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

As poetry rarely pays well, David McIntire (he/him) has taken on numerous occupations over the years including printer, flooring installer, delivery boy, factotum, retail manager, warehouse worker, pharmacy technician, security guard, handyman, Uber driver and roadie. He lived for a time in a converted school bus (dubbed the Poetry Bus). He now lives in a large house with several people and three cats. His third, and most recent, collection, Everything I Write is a Love Song to the World was published by Moon Tide Press in 2019, while his first two books of poetry, Punk Rock Breakfast and No One Will Believe You, were published by International Word Bank Press. In 2016 he toured Sweden with other poets and delivered a live radio performance in Stockholm. His poetry has also been translated into Swedish for local publication. He has released two CDs, one a spoken word album with musical accompaniment and one with his band 2-bit Whore.

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.

As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Michael Schein at Art At The Cave on October 13, 2022

September 19, 2022

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Michael Schein

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, PRO-CHOICE,

ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

7 pm

Thursday, October 13

Art at the Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

$5 Suggested donation

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Michael Schein wrote Liquid Perishable Hazardous (2019, poetry), John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (2015, historical), The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality by AB Bard(2012, hysterical), and historical novels Bones Beneath Our Feet (2011) and Just Deceits (2005). Schein edited Poets UNiTE! The LiTFUSE Anthology (2015). His poetry appears in many journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart three times. Schein is the founder of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop (litfuse.us), and has taught at Port Townsend Writers Conference, Write on the Sound, and elsewhere. Spirits inhabit earth and sky. Poetry is everywhere. michaelschein.com.

Michael Schein will also be reading at the Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education

Tuesday, Oct. 18. Visit https://www.ojmche.org/events/oregon-jewish-voices-2022/ for more information

Art At The CAVE was established in 2017. Located at 108 E. Evergreen in downtown Vancouver, the CAVE is free and open to the public Tues-Sat, 10am-4pm, and on First Fridays when it remains open until 8:00pm. The gallery is also available to host events. Visit the website at artatthecave.com or contact gallery@artatthecave.com for more information.

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.

As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Pattie Palmer-Baker at Art at the Cave July 14, 2022

June 19, 2022

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Pattie Palmer-Baker

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,  

ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

7 pm

Thursday, July 14

Art at the Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

$5 Suggested donation

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Pattie Palmer-Baker lives in Portland, Oregon with her beloved husband and her quirky, elderly dachshund who writes odes to treats. Over the years of exhibiting her artwork – a combination of paste paper collages with her poetry in calligraphic form – she was surprised and delighted that people, despite what they may believe, do like poetry. In fact, many liked the poems better than the visual art. She now concentrates on writing.

Nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize, Palmer-Baker has been published in many journals including The Poeming Pigeon, VoiceCatcher, The Best of VoiceCatcher, Ghazal Page, Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Calyx, and Phantom Drift. Her chapbook, The Color of Goodbye, was recently published by Kelsay Books: https://kelsaybooks.com/products/the-color-of-goodbye.

Learn more at https://www.pattiepalmerbaker.com/

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.

As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Art At The CAVE was established in 2017. Located at 108 E. Evergreen in downtown Vancouver, the CAVE is free and open to the public Tues-Sat, 10am-4pm, and on First Fridays when it remains open until 8:00pm. The gallery is also available to host events. Visit the website at artatthecave.com or contact gallery@artatthecave.com for more information

Reach Out, Reach In, the debut chapbook from Leah Klass

October 25, 2021

Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to present the debut chapbook from Leah Klass. Recently relocated from Portland to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Leah is a poet, community activist, global connector, and World Peace Fellow. Hers is the first book of poetry Printed Matter Vancouver has published featuring a writer who lives outside of Southwest Washington.

Order now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09K1HRGF6/

The debut collection of poetry by Leah Klass tells stories of discovering empathy through human connection. Her work is a rallying call to value our everyday interactions with other people. Reach Out, Reach In offers concrete ideas for transforming the world into a warmer, more welcoming place.

Reach Out, Reach In

By Leah Klass

Published by Printed Vancouver

October 25, 2021

Cover Art & Design by Mercer Hanau

Edited by Toni Lumbrazo Luna and Christopher Luna

ASIN: ‎ B09K1HRGF6
ISBN-13‏: ‎ 979-8985129106

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR REACH OUT, REACH IN

How we are made is how we see, and from the rich mosaic of her background Leah Klass delivers kaleidoscopic poems that will persuade your vision to see this world made strange and precious. This book offers local beginnings, global consciousness, and the courage to use language for what it needs to do: sustain the sovereign self engaged in connecting the private life to the public world. Enter this book troubled, then emerge knowing “there is another way.” — Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar

I read Reach Out, Reach In straight through and want more. Leah Klass tells to the bone truth in bold narratives and chewable language. She is a thoroughly American woman who gathered new languages and a layered identity living in many countries. “Understand I am global,” she writes, and we do, seeing through her “inherited pattern recognition” a unifying grasp of culture and language that threads through her own evolution from childhood to maturity. These brave poems move with a strong beat, riding on a wide and inclusive heart. They illuminate so much of a woman’s experience through the stages of her life. For Klass, a fierce advocacy for all people developed, rooted in connection and kindness, and in her passion for acts big and small in families and communities that count toward healing the world. — Rae Latham 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Washington, D.C., Leah’s education has included attending diverse public schools and studying abroad. She learned Spanish in the homes of her friends in Falls Church, Virginia. In high school she turned 16 on a secular kibbutz, where she worked on the assembly line in an olive factory and was chased by ostriches. She later waitressed and cleaned houses to help pay for her studies in Anthropology at the University of Virginia which included a year of study abroad in Brazil. She completed a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland thanks to a Rotary Fellowship in Argentina and Australia. 

She spent the first years of her career bringing businesses from different countries together and encouraging friendships between strangers. Market research and report writing were a ticket to long weekends in Chile and high speed taxi rides in Mexico. She has also helped get social services to migrant communities, taught students how to better network and facilitated group discussions for international business people.

Leah’s greatest pleasures are making connections and reaching out to build community. Speaking many languages allows her to communicate with more people. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese and some Hebrew and German. She is committed to valuing intergenerational relationships and amplifying kindness. 

After becoming a mother, Leah experienced a great shift in her understanding of the world and felt an overwhelming desire to express her need to build community and to help others find and use their voices. In tandem, she joined a kind and passionate poetry community in Portland, Oregon. With the support of the group, poetry has become a way for her to tell stories and to activate others to go out and do something good.

Learn more at www.leahklass.com.

Photos from Dan Raphael and Christopher Luna in conversation at Powell’s Books October 27, 2019

November 15, 2019

On October 27, Powell’s Books presented dan raphael in conversation with Christopher Luna. The event commemorated the publication of Manything, dan’s 21st book of poetry.

dan raphael’s new book got it’s title from the wide variety of visions, voices and vocabularies among the 65 poems For 4 decades dan’s been active in the northwest as poet, performer, editor and reading host. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a political poem for the KBOO Evening News.

Larry Smith, editor of Caliban, wrote: “It is appropriate that Dan Raphael’s Manything has come out in the year of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. Raphael is one of the few poets since Whitman to have such a complete delight in the multiplicity of the world. His integration of the objects of man’s making with the wildness of nature is liberating. The poet’s body parts can function independently and often co-mingle freely with dirty streets, rain, bottles, squirrels, and the sun. Manything is a vision, one that moves us beyond our complacency, making us less sure that the world we navigate daily is what we think it is. Like Louis Aragon in Paysan de Paris, Raphael awakens us to the ecstatic possibility that we might fall right through the sidewalk.”

Christopher Luna served as the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. Luna has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, a small press which also provides writing coaching, editing, and manuscript review for Northwest writers. He and Toni co-host the LGBTQ+ friendly, all ages and uncensored Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, founded by Christopher in 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. His first full-length collection of poetry, Message from the Vessel in a Dream, was published by Flowstone Press in 2018. A revised and expanded version of Ghost Town, USA, which features poems and observations of Vancouver, WA from a New Yorker’s perspective, is forthcoming from Uttered Chaos Press.

At the event, Christopher read the following tribute to dan, inspired by their friendship and by dan’s latest book:

For Dan Raphael

walking around the neighborhood
like Frank O’Hara on shrooms
“cosmologies between [his] fingers”
full breakfast in his belly
dan becomes the street

impervious to rain
or despair over
encroaching fascism

only a guy who spent
three decades at the DMV
can truly grok the spiritual fortitude
it takes to resist
the soul-killing serpents
of end days-capitalism

& the paranoia of
the dispirited proletariat
to soar past all prohibition
levitate beyond pessimism

he who sees
what we do not
“rooted like a tree”
limbs swaying like
antenna jostled by the wind

picking up
electromagnetic waves
as he swings to & fro
barefooted
hypersensitive
connected

possessed
by vision
potent enough
to crack a heart open
blow yr mind

or part the fog
we muddle through
to avoid the pain
of living

 

dan raphael in Conversation with Christopher Luna at Powell’s Books on October 27

September 29, 2019

dan raphael in Conversation with Christopher Luna
Sunday, October 27 at 2:00 PM
Powell’s City of Books
1005 W Burnside St.
Portland, OR 97209

Manything, poet dan raphael’s 21st book, begins with a description of the Rapture from downtown Portland and ends talking about cosmological babies with a couple universes of experience and imagination in between. Raphael will be joined in conversation by Christopher Luna, author of Message From the Vessel in a Dream.

manything

Preorder a signed edition of Manything

Event description from dan raphael’s Facebook event page:

Manything, dan raphael’s 21st book, is just out from Unlikely Books. He’ll read a couple then be joined by Christopher Luna, the poetic heart of Vancouver, WA in talking about Manything, exchanging poems, and other topics.

dan raphael’s new book got it’s title from the wide variety of visions, voices and vocabularies among the 65 poems For 4 decades dan’s been active in the northwest as poet, performer, editor and reading host. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a political poem for the KBOO Evening News.

Larry Smith, editor of Caliban, wrote: “It is appropriate that Dan Raphael’s Manything has come out in the year of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. Raphael is one of the few poets since Whitman to have such a complete delight in the multiplicity of the world. His integration of the objects of man’s making with the wildness of nature is liberating. The poet’s body parts can function independently and often co-mingle freely with dirty streets, rain, bottles, squirrels, and the sun. Manything is a vision, one that moves us beyond our complacency, making us less sure that the world we navigate daily is what we think it is. Like Louis Aragon in Paysan de Paris, Raphael awakens us to the ecstatic possibility that we might fall right through the sidewalk.”

Christopher Luna served as the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. Luna has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, a small press which also provides writing coaching, editing, and manuscript review for Northwest writers. He and Toni co-host the LGBTQ+ friendly, all ages and uncensored Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, founded by Christopher in 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. His first full-length collection of poetry, Message from the Vessel in a Dream, was published by Flowstone Press in 2018. A revised and expanded version of Ghost Town, USA, which features poems and observations of Vancouver, WA from a New Yorker’s perspective, is forthcoming from Uttered Chaos Press.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Jonathan Oak at Angst Gallery on October 10, 2019

September 15, 2019

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic flyer October 10 2019

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna of Printed Matter Vancouver
Featuring Jonathan Oak

7 pm
Thursday, October 10
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7

$5 Suggested donation (for featured poet)

Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street
Sound provided by Briz Loan & Guitar
LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

Jonathan Oak is the author of two poetry books, Sutly fucked ↑ and Things I Forgot To Say, as well as the upcoming novel Jerry. He has lived and performed in Portland for the last six years. He was part of the VAMP reading series in San Diego and a fixture in the Phoenix poetry and music scene. He was on three Slam Nationals teams, hosted a poetry radio show, worked underground theater in San Francisco, and ran writing workshops for 15 years.

[UPDATED] Wordlights Saturday Poetry Evening Featuring Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Morgan Paige August 31, 2019

June 21, 2019

Wordlights August 31 2019

Wordlights Saturday poetry evenings presented by NovaPDX, Rocking Frog Cafe and hosted by Igor Brezhnev.

On Saturday August 31st, we’ll have a feature from Christopher Luna, two mini features from Toni Lumbrazo Luna & Morgan Paige, and a short set poetry open mic!

OUR FEATURE:

Christopher in Portland by Morgan
Christopher Luna in PDX by Morgan Paige

Christopher Luna

Christopher Luna served as the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. His first full-length collection of poetry, Message from the Vessel in a Dream, was published by Flowstone Press in 2018. Luna has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, a small press for Northwest writers which also provides writing coaching, editing, and manuscript review. He has hosted the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA since 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. In 2019 Uttered Chaos Press in Eugene, OR will release a revised and expanded edition of Christopher’s Ghost Town, USA, a decade-long investigative poem about Vancouver, WA.

MINI FEATURES FROM:

BW Toni Lumbrazo Luna by Maria Vara
Toni Lumbrazo Luna by Maria Vara

Toni Lumbrazo Luna

Toni Lumbrazo Luna (formerly Partington) is a poet, editor, publisher, visual artist, and writing coach living in Vancouver, Washington. She holds a B.A. in Social Work and a M.A. in Humanities and Literary Editing. She’s had a long career in social work, college teaching and administration, grant writing, life and career coaching, and nonprofit consulting.

She is the author of three books of poetry: Jesus is a Gas, Wind Wing, and her most recent, Driven By Hope, released in June 2019. Her poetry has been published in VoiceCatcher (editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink, Poeming Pigeon, Perceptions and more.
She was Co-Editor for the final print edition of VoiceCatcher 6. Toni is currently working on her memoir, titled Life in View of the Crazy House.

Toni is co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press imprint that publishes the poetry of Pacific Northwest writers. Toni works with poets and writers on their manuscripts, individual poems, essays, and prose. She has also developed business plans, marketing materials, grant proposals, and government reports. She co-hosts the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, established in 2004 by
Christopher Luna.

Toni has been creating visual art since 1980 and in the last seven years has enjoyed the challenge of collage using found materials. She uses both 2D and 3D formats, experimenting with salvaged metals, plastics and anything that is the slightest bit unusual.

Most recently she was nominated to serve on the Clark County Arts Commission representing the business community. Originally from central New York, she’s made the Pacific Northwest her home for thirty years. Toni has been writing poetry since she was ten years old and is still in love with it!

Toni can be reached at http://www.printedmattervancouver.com

Morgan in Portland
Morgan Paige in PDX by Christopher Luna

Morgan Paige

Morgan Paige is a creator, morbid optimist, business owner and cannabis lover residing in Vancouver, WA. Her poetic cadence is not her own. Rather, an expression of the ever unfolding spiral of nature manifesting itself through her selection of shared symbols and sounds we call language. Her poetry takes you on a playful, chanting ride, inviting you to join her in exploring femininity, psychedelia, love, addiction, philosophy and the life/death/life cycle.

She regularly performs at open mics in Vancouver and Portland, OR and has been featured at readings such as The Dialogue, Lets Talk About Sex, Ghost Town Open Mic and The Last Stand at Wildwood Saloon. Most recently, she performed at the Kiggins Theatre with the Clark County Poet Laureate, Gwendolyn Morgan, for VanTalks 2019.

Her first chapbook will be released summer 2019.

***

Sign-ups start at 5:30, show starts at 6PM. On second and fourth Saturdays each performer in the open mic gets 5 minutes, there are only 8 slots available and the list order is randomized.

Come share your words and join us for a night of open mic, a great feature, delicious nourishment and tasty libations.

***

Rocking Frog Cafe is an independently run, local gem in the lower Belmont District of southeast Portland. Nestled in a lovely early-century Craftsman-style bungalow, we offer a comfortable place to study, eat and socialize. Find out more about The Rocking Frog at rockingfrogpdx.com.

NovaPDX is a talent and production company based in Portland, Oregon. We organize and host performance and educational events, showcasing local and visiting musicians, poets and comedians. Our mission is to create spaces where talent thrives. Learn more about us at novapdx.org.

Your host, Igor Brezhnev is a poet, an author, an artist and a book designer among his other sins. He is roaming the West Coast thinking up new art, books and helping shape creative projects. You can find out more about Igor at igorbrezhnev.com

Visions & Voices/ Double Vision: Collaborative Exhibits Featuring Poems by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna

April 14, 2019

We were out of town but have finally had a chance to see Christopher’s work in Voices & Visions, the art and poetry collaboration sponsored by the Vancouver Community Library.

“Ocean” by Christopher Luna

Christopher sent “Allow Me My Unassailable Sincerity” to the program for an artists to render and received the image “Ocean,” to which he wrote a poem of the same title.

Visions & Voices- A Community Art Experience
Vancouver Community Library
901 C St
Vancouver, WA 98660

Contact Person: VA Art Team
Email Address: vaartteam@fvrl.org

The Vancouver Community Library is proud to present “Visions & Voices,” a creative art exchange where community members were invited to offer a visual art piece or a written piece. They were then anonymously paired to respond to each other’s work. The original visual art and written pieces are displayed alongside the response pieces, resulting in a truly unique, interdisciplinary exhibition of work.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 5 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Columbia Room in the downtown library during the First Friday Art Walk. The exhibit will be on display in the Columbia Room through April 30, and may be viewed by the public whenever the room is not booked for private use.

Both Toni and Christopher participated in double Visions, a collaboration between Gallery One in Ellensburg and in Blue Sky Center for Photographic Arts in Portland which will be on display throughout April for National Poetry Month. The opening reception for this show also served as the opening for the annual Inland Poetry Prowl.

Double Vision: An Exhibition of Image & Word, featuring photographs curated by Zemie Barr from Portland’s Blue Sky Center for Photographic Arts, paired with poems from Inland Poetry poets. Gallery One, 408 N Pearl.

The following information about the show is taken from the Gallery One website:

Double Vision

April 5-27, 2019

curated by Zemie Barr, Blue Sky Gallery
in collaboration with Inland Poetry Prowl

Visual Artists: Susan Bein, Lucas DeShazer, Randi Ganulin, Laura Kurtenbach, Jennifer Zwick

Poets: Kristen Berger, Chris Buckley, Meredith Clark, Mary Crane, C.G. Dahlin, Lynne Ellis, Nancy Flynn, Sierra Golden, Christine Kendall, Larry Kerschner, Laura LeHew, Christopher Luna, Claudia Castro Luna, Tanya McDonald, Travis Naught, Melanie Noel, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, Kate Peterson, Rena Priest, Benjamin Schmitt, Carey Taylor, Armin Tolentino, Gyorgi Voros, Taylor Waring, Michael Welch

Opening Reception: April 5, 5-8pm

Exhibit Sponsors:
Dick & Jane’s Spot
CWU, Office of the Provost

Double Vision is a selection of photographs by five artists from Blue Sky’s 2018 Pacific Northwest Drawers, an annual juried exhibition featuring portfolios by over forty photographers from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The work on view by these five selected artists brings aesthetic play to the forefront, yet as the title indicates, each artist is presenting two distinct visions–aesthetic,and conceptual–in their photographs that push and pull at each other to reveal more serious underlying themes that range from the personal to the universal, along with social commentary and astute reflections upon the unique mechanics of communicating through photography.

In her series Head Shots, Susan Bein embraces the fact that she is bald, and uses the dome of her head as a stage for her whimsical still lifes. Her playful, often humorous, compositions underscore the artist’s comfort within her own skin as she flaunts conventional expectations of what a woman’s body “should” look like. Laura Kurtenbach is also concerned with visual representations of women in her series, Femme Noir. To disrupt and draw attention to the objectification and and narratives of victimization in popular media, she places found images and objects in new photographed compositions. Although aesthetically playful, Kurtenbach’s use of light and shadow is reminiscent of the darker undertones found in vintage film noir. Randi Ganulin similarly reflects upon the power of mass media in Paired Disasters. Her compositions combine photographs of clippings from the Los Angeles Times with scenes from her everyday life. In this way, Ganulin highlights visual patterns that link the microcosm with the macrocosm, illustrating the intrinsic link between public and private life, yet the visual tension still present mirrors the perceived, albeit tenuous, separation between the individual and the collective.

This visual tension and disconnect is also evident in Lucas DeShazer’s photographs of murals that depict the settling of the American West. Many of these public artworks paint a celebratory picture of the past that leaves out the genocide of indigenous peoples and the devastation of natural resources and animal habitats that occurred in the process. DeShazer uses his camera to draw attention to this flattening of history, yet it is fascinating that he uses photography to do so, as the camera literally flattens our three-dimensional reality into two dimensions. Jennifer Zwick experiments with this characteristic of the medium in her images from the series An Exercise in Formal Composition. Using a slightly off-balance right triangle rendered in a variety of materials, she intervenes in otherwise straightforward compositions to expose the artist’s hand in the construction of a photograph.

When viewing photographs, we often suspend disbelief, immersing ourselves in the scene or narrative presented to us while ignoring the two-dimensionality of the photograph or the subjectivity of the person behind the camera. Zwick, as well as the four other artists featured in Double Vision, encourage this consideration of how their photographs are made and how materials and process inform meaning, allowing for engagement with their work on multiple levels.

Inland Poetry Prowl, now in its 4th year, is a weekend-long poetry event hosted by various venues within easy walking distance, in the heart of historic downtown Ellensburg, WA. Celebrating Sylvia Plath, this event offers featured guest readers, craft talks, open mics, live radio broadcast, book fair, and film screening. Gallery One will be a venue for the event on Saturday, April 6.