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"Erosion" -Poet John James Honors Carrie Marie Burr;s Bee Imagery

EROSION

I played with the sunlight splayed between grains, haloes 

of ash around her sleeping eyes. Skeleton stalks moving

briefly in the yard. She told me about the bees, how in winter

they expel the crumpled bodies of their dead, dropping shells

one by one onto the dirt. Hive’s center, the queen warms herself

on honey. I think of the artist who scooped them in her palm, 

sealed them in bags, left them in the window. Wheat shocks, 

summer dark. An hour lying in the grass. Emptiness itself cuts 

along the bank. I wanted to make this vivid, so vivid. To say

a passerine flits in the wind. Pistil, stamen, pollen floods my nose, 

powdering tent walls, the acne scars honeycombing her face.

Sea’s rush, river’s stop. Seepage from a well. Everyone believes 

in one rapture or another. It is summer, I am thirsty. My canteen

is empty. There is not enough water. There was never enough water.

 

John James- Image courtesy of Carrie Burr

John James- Image courtesy of Carrie Burr

John James is the author of Chthonic, winner of the 2014 CutBank Chapbook Award. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch, Best New Poets 2016, Best American Poetry 2017, and elsewhere. He serves as graduate associate to the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University, where he directs the Summer School's Creative Writing Institute.

1619 Flux gallery features more than a dozen artists in ‘Meet Your Neighbors: LGBTQ Perspectives’

By SARA HAVENS | August 4, 2017 4:15 pm

1619 Flux opened last year. Photos By Jessica Oberdick

More than 12 visual artists and six spoken-word performers are converging at the West Louisville gallery and event space known as 1619 Flux: Art + Activism for an exhibition that’ll explore voices that are often marginalized in our society. “Meet Your Neighbors: Feminine & LGBTQ Perspectives” opens Saturday and will continue throughout the month, featuring several exhibit-related events along the way.

1619 Flux opened last spring as a gallery, community center, event space and nonprofit whose mission is to unite the community and desegregate the city. This exhibit fits squarely into that mission, says artistic director Jesse Levesque.

“The opportunity to do this exhibition comes at a time when the dominant narrative in the U.S. is to squash the voices of minorities — like women and LGBTQ+ people,” she tells Insider. “1619 Flux would like to continue to offer platforms to artists from all backgrounds to unite diverse audiences in our West Louisville space through creative expression.”

The show was co-curated by Levesque, Flux founding director, Kara Nichols, and UofL grad student, Jessica Oberdick, and features artwork in various mediums. Levesque says Oberdick was the catalyst for the show and helped bring some artists on board who had never exhibited at the gallery.

Oberdick included female artists from her master’s thesis exhibit she recently did at UofL’s Hite Art Institute, and they joined a group of artists who were already showing at Flux.

If there’s a common theme to the show, Levesque says it can be found in the title.

“1619 Flux’s overall theme for 2017/2018 is ‘neighborhood revitalization’ and the creative people helping to make this happen,” she explains. “Meeting and accepting artists with feminine and LGBTQ+ perspectives from our neighborhoods is core to revitalizing place.”

The gallery was awarded a grant by the Kentucky Foundation for Women to help with programming for the exhibit, and several events are planned throughout the month. Examples include an installation by artist SK Lockhart, which will begin at Saturday’s open reception, and an art book by Moriah Mudd-Kelly that details the entire exhibition and will be for sale at the gallery.

“(We’re) engaged in social practice, which means the programming and connecting conversations that happen during the run of this exhibition are each art pieces in and of themselves, and each event is capable of creating social change in and around 1619 Flux,” says Levesque.

Meet Your Neighbors: Feminine & LGBTQ Perspectives” opens Saturday, Aug. 5, with a free reception from 6-9 p.m. It continues through Sept. 15. 1619 Flux is located at 1619 W. Main St.

Here is a schedule of events associated with the exhibit:

  • Saturday, Aug. 5 — Opening Reception, 6-9 p.m.
  • Wednesday, Aug. 23 — “Connecting Conversations” with J.P. Davis, Fund for the Arts’ VP, and artist Michael Kopp, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
  • Wednesday, Aug. 30 — “An Evening with Spoken Word Artists,” 5:30-7:30 p.m.
  • Wednesday, Sept. 6 — “Connecting Conversations” with “Strange Fruit” host Kahlia Story and artist Hannah Drake, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
  • Friday, Sept. 15 — Closing Reception, 6-9 p.m.

Demographically Speaking- A Figurative Exhibition

Opening  Preview  Party
January 13th    6-10pm

Though the holidays end, the party doesn't have to! 

Lexington Art League is excited to announce the return of our ever-popular figure show with this exclusive evening of art, music, and dancing. The Opening Preview Party for "Demographically Speaking, a Figurative Exhibition" will provide the first look at this evocative exhibition curated by Daniel Pfalzgraf, Chief Curator of the Carnegie Center for Art & History in New Albany, Indiana. Posing the question, 'whose stories are being told in the art world?' the new dimension and unique perspective Pfalzgraf brings to the traditional figure or nude show aims to provoke audiences to consider the diversity of our city, our region, and our country through stories of identity told through art. 

Demographically Speaking will feature music by Joslyn & The Sweet Compression and video installations by artist Nick Warner.

The Opening Preview Party is graciously sponsored by Marnie Clay HoloubekEnderle Besten Dieruf, PLLCQX.netWest Sixth BrewingMD-Update KY.

*VIP Lounge Access permits each guest to table-side service in a private, appointed space of the historic Loudoun House.

Tickets available here

$60 per member/$110 per member couple
$75 non-member/$140 non-member couple
*VIP Lounge Access tickets $30

Today on Artebella!

TODAY'S FEATURED ARTIST & WORK:

Carrie Burr SHADOW

mixed media, 12x6x6ft, 2016

Photographer and installation artist Carrie Burr’s “Shadow” is currently a part of The Lexington Art League exhibit, Artist: Body, curated by Julien Robson (former curator of Contemporary Art at The Speed Museum in Louisville), but you need to look closely at the somewhat abstract sculpture to see how the human form is represented. The enigmatic arrangement of cheesecloth and black rice utilizes a provocative balance of tension and repose; a suspended weight hanging over the... Continue Reading

- See more at: http://www.artebelladaily.org/#sthash.vJ7ysgE6.dpuf