M i d - M a n h a t t a n L i b r a r y

Presents

"Artists as Poets"

Monday April 16, 2007

 6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor

Mid-Manhattan Library

The New York Public Library

40th Street and 5th Avenue

New York, NY 10016

212-340-0871

During a lively roundtable Stephen Spretnjak and a group of well-known artists will be reading their poems along with projections of their art works.  These artists are all included in Spretnjak’s twenty-year archive project “Poetic Investigations” containing over 400 artists/poets.

Becky Howland's early artwork was politically charged.  She co-founded ABC No Rio (artists' run alternative space on Rivington St.) where she built her fountain "Brainwash."  During shows there, she helped organize evenings of poetry, music and video.  She was a member of "Colab," a 40-artist union known for exhibitions in unusual places – such as Times Square.  Her work was recently highlighted in the "Downtown Show" at NYU Grey Art Gallery.

Kim Keever's large-scale photographs and poems elicit the overwhelming energies that are experienced within nature.  These hyper-real vistas echo in sublime operatic magnitude.
Even more amazing is that his universes have been assembled and then activated within a

100-gallon water tank.

Karen Shaw's   visual / linguistic collages are conceptual poems that she has discovered within mass-media images containing words and numbers.  Her system (termed "SUMMATICS") assigns a numerical value to letters that add up to corresponding words. Surprising choices are determined by mood, syntax, and grammatical structure.

Harriet Shorr is recognized as an artist who has dramatically reinterpreted the genre of still-life painting.   She is a virtuoso colorist and uses masterful gestures with the brush. She orchestrates the layering of images in a manner that allows the viewer to float above or become submerged within their own nature.  We are invited into a reverie of unexpected perception, memory recall, and narrative discovery.

Stephen Westfall's abstract paintings are loosely based on the grid. These highly charged horizontal and vertical spaces seem to flicker back-and-forth between being whole and fragmentary. Brilliant fields of color float within the sweep of brushed line. Stephen's poems reveal intelligent and humorous insights as points of reference.

Stephen Spretnjak's conceptual artworks are projected in alternative places (NYPL windows, building facades, hallways, architectural niches, floors, etc.). The passerby happens upon these arenas then experiences a moment as the tangibility of the world becomes a flickering light breathed into the material mass of every-day objects. Time, movement, and space ... echo ... expand ... and acquire... the limitlessness of free-verse composition.

Elevators access the 6th floor after 6p.m.

All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.