The following events are at The Zumbrota State Theatre.
Event Information:
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Fri26Apr2019Reception at Crossings: 6:30pm Program at State Theatre: 7:30pm
Poet-Artist Reception
Crossings Event at the Zumbrota State Theatre
Exploring Collaboration, the Annual Poet-Artist Collaboration Returns to Crossings
Crossings’ XVIII Annual Poet-Artist Collaboration exhibit, celebrating a pairing of two art forms, is on display March 25 through May 4. Read the poems and determine for yourself how the artists were inspired. Fifty poets and visual artists took part in this years’ exhibit which can be seen free of charge during regular business hours. A reception and poetry reading takes place Friday, April 26, at 6:30 p.m. both at the gallery and next door at the State Theatre.Over 100 poets and artists participated in this year’s event by entering up to three poems each, or submitting artistic work samples. Jurors winnowed more than 200 poems down to just 26. Other jurors selected 26 artists from those who entered. For this exhibit, each artist chooses one poem from which to create an artwork. Poems and the work they inspired are displayed together.
The poems share many familiar life experiences, from living in Minnesota or the countryside or in warmer climates. Partings are painfully, lovingly shared, as are happy moments of the poets’ lives. The artists turned their vision of the poem given to them into works using a variety of mediums, including oil and watercolor, mixed media, weavings, encaustic and more.
Elizabeth Weir, of Wayzata, MN, wrote “A Thing Not to Be Missed,” set in Namaqualand, Namibia, which begins:
We hurry into the setting sun in search of Namaqualand’s brief promise
of a desert strewn with the hues of sudden daisies. Disappointment
thrums beneath our tires; a few snatches of color here and there.
We speed on, blind with haste, our habit to search and consume,
never enough time to know the world and live in its gift.Inspired by a different poem, Alison Anne McClocklin of Rochester created “Wove.” About her process, she says: After a quiet pause when I first read this gentle poem, my natural response was with playful curiosity—I said, "darn it!" and slid a lightbulb into one of my treasured, holey, handknit socks. Thus, a mama sock doll was born and a world of woven children in a colorful, patched together, mended up circle celebrating the joys of homespun motherhood, resourcefulness, and creativity. It was a joyful chance to explore the aesthetics of weaving, darning, patching, and craftiness, all with salvaged scraps of fiber, to honor the quiet, but beautifully rich, moment of life this poem expresses.
