UHART Nomad MFA Thesis Exhibition
UHART Nomad MFA Thesis Exhibition
Performance by
Kevin Quiles Bonilla
To register for this free event, click here.
Real Art Ways presents the premiere of a new performance by Kevin Quiles Bonilla, titled There’s a rumble beneath the tarp. The filmed performance, lasting around 15 minutes, will premiere via Zoom and Facebook starting at 6:30 PM EDT on Thursday, July 8. A talkback with artist Kevin Quiles Bonilla will follow the premiere.
There’s a rumble beneath the tarp incorporates Bonilla’s use of lip-syncing as a “form of embodiment,” with his ongoing exploration of the blue tarp. According to the artist, the tarp acts as “the remnants of a trauma that remains with us”. Bonilla’s body will become a physical representation of a hurricane through movement and dress, moving along to Caribbean dance and bomba music.The full event will last about 45 minutes.
Accessibility: Automated closed captions will be provided by Zoom, and all images/videos will be visually described.
There’s a rumble beneath the tarp is supported in part by the Artist Engagement Fund from the National Performance Network.
About The Artist:
Kevin Quiles Bonilla (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received a BA in Fine Arts – Photography from the University of Puerto Rico (2015) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design (2018). He has recently presented his work at The Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, The Shelly & Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery, Dedalus Foundation, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Project Space. He has been an artist in residence at Art Beyond Sight’s Arts + Disability Residency (2018-2019), Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Queer Performance Residency (2019) and LMCC’s Workspace Residency (2019-2020). He currently lives and works between Puerto Rico and New York.Creative Cocktail Hour Returns!
Held every third Thursday of the month. A diversity of cool cats and outcasts gathers to experience art and connect with one another. Dancing is encouraged though not required.
Featuring
Live music from Red Baraat “Red Baraat is a Brooklyn-based ensemble that makes heart-pounding, insanely infectious music. The band is particularly known and loved for its unforgettable live performances.” –NPR
DJ James Hall AKA Mr. Realistic – is a Connecticut and NYC USA based DJ/Producer. Mr. Realistic is no stranger to this thing called house music! He’s been in the game since the late 80’s spinning tribal, deep, soulful and afro house music at events and clubs around the US and Europe, such as PartyCast TV, the Liquid Sol House Events, the Amsterdam Dance Event, and, upcoming in July 2021, The Lago Mio Fest in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Learn more HERE. Opening Reception: 
Then The Morning Comes a new solo exhibition by Lydia Viscardi, curated by David Borawski 
Real Wall: Lauren Be Dear Through the Veil, is an installation and performance by Hartford-based artist Lauren Be Dear and part of the Real Wall series. Performances are at 7:00 PM and 9:15 PM during the Creative Cocktail Hour. On View: As the palm is bent, the boy is inclined by Kevin Quiles Bonilla Situational Awareness by Jacob Cullers Plus: Cafe/bar Yoga with Barbara Hocker Food Trucks from Baba Ghanoush and East West Grille Art activities for adults and kids And you! 
Kevin Quiles Bonilla
To register for this free event, click here.
Exhibiting artist Kevin Quiles Bonilla is joined by Visual Arts Manager Neil Daigle Orians in a conversation surrounding the work in the solo exhibition, As the palm is bent, the boy is inclined. Bonilla uses photography, installation, and performance to explore ideas around colonialism, queerness, and disability using a personal narrative as a catalyst. As the palm is bent, the boy is inclined incorporates historic Western depictions of Puerto Rico with recent events, blurring boundaries between exoticized fantasy and reality. This conversation will take an in-depth look at the individual works contained in the exhibition and the greater narrative they create together. Lasting about an hour, the event will include time for audience questions This event will also be broadcast on our Facebook page.About The Artist:
Kevin Quiles Bonilla (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received a BA in Fine Arts – Photography from the University of Puerto Rico (2015) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design (2018). He has recently presented his work at The Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, The Shelly & Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery, Dedalus Foundation, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Project Space. He has been an artist in residence at Art Beyond Sight’s Arts + Disability Residency (2018-2019), Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Queer Performance Residency (2019) and LMCC’s Workspace Residency (2019-2020). He currently lives and works between Puerto Rico and New York.We invite you to a one-night virtual screening of Madan Sara followed by a post-film discussion with director Etant Dupain.
Grand’Anse Health and Development Association (GAHDA) is happy to be working with Real Art Ways to show this important film about the women who play a central role in the Haitian economy and supporting local communities. “Madan Sara is a film about the power of Black women in a global economy and their contributions that too often go unacknowledged.” – Ms. MagazineEvent Details:
-Buy your ticket online anytime before the event.
-Tickets are $10 (with 50% of the profits benefiting Madan Sara and an additional donation to GAHDA)
-On Wed, June 9 you will receive an email with a link to the virtual screening room and a link to the post-film discussion on Zoom.
-Log in to watch Madan Sara at 6:45 PM (runtime 50 min.)
-At 8 pm log into the Zoom room for the post-film discussion and Q&A with director Etant Dupain.
More about the film:
The women known as Madan Sara in Haiti work tirelessly to buy, distribute, and sell food and other essentials in markets through the country. Despite the obstacles faced by the women working in a sector that lacks investment, infrastructure and state assistance, the Madan Sara continue to be one of the most critical parts of the Haitian economy and of who we are as a country.
The Madan Sara documentary tells the stories of these indefatigable women who work at the margins to make Haiti’s economy run. Despite facing intense hardship and social stigma, the hard work of the Madan Sara puts their children through school, houses their families, and helps to ensure a better life for generations to come. This film amplifies the calls of the Madan Sara as they speak directly to society to share their dreams for a more just Haiti.
Post-Film Talk | 8 PM:
Madan Sara director Etant Dupain will be in conversation with and answer questions from the audience. The discussion will be moderated by Judy Lewis, Professor of Public Health Sciences at UCONN Health.About the Panelists:
Etant Dupain is a journalist, filmmaker, and community organizer. For over a decade, he has worked as a producer on documentaries and for international news media outlets including Al Jazeera, TeleSur, BBC, CNN, Netflix, PBS, and Vice. Etant founded an alternative media project in Haiti to enable citizen journalists to provide access to information in Haitian Creole for and about internally-displaced people, aid accountability, and politics. Now, moved by the strength of his mother and the women known as the Madan Sara who make Haiti’s economy run, he’s making his first personal film.
Judy Lewis is a public health sociologist and Professor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences and Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut Medical School. She is President of the Grand’Anse Health & Development Association Board; founding member and Board Chair of Women and Health Together for the Future, and has served in leadership positions of many global health organizations including the World Federation of Public Health Association, American Public Health Association and CORE Group. Prof. Lewis has worked to improve community health in rural Haiti for over 30 years. She is senior author of “The Health of Women/Mothers and Children,” in Understanding Global Medicine and Health, and has written many articles about maternal and child health and other public health issues in Haiti, Ecuador and Sri Lanka. She has conducted research, program evaluation and training in over 50 countries. She received the 2018 Carl E. Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Health Section, American Public Health Association, honoring the visionaries and leaders in international health.
A Birder’s Guide To Everything
Real Art Ways Science on Screen® season invites you to experience the unique combination of a feature film and a relevant talk from a notable local figure in science.
Pre-Film Talk | 6:30 PM
Effects of Climate Change on the Migratory Patterns of Birds with Dr. Matthew Kamm, Ornithologist/Biologist Instructor at Zoo New England
A Birder’s Guide To Everything | 7:00 PM
“A tender and gentle coming-of-age story” –RogerEbert.com “An eye-opener for anyone who takes the everyday natural world for granted.” –NY Times On the eve of his father’s remarriage, a teenage birding enthusiast leads his friends on a road trip to find an extremely rare duck.Speaker Bio:
Dr. Matthew Kamm is a Boston-based wildlife biologist who specializes in ornithology. Matt has studied the natural history of wild birds while working for Mass Audubon and during his Ph.D work at Tufts University, with a focus on understanding songbird migration and the life history of American kestrels. He currently works as the Conservation Outreach Coordinator for Zoo New England.
Science on Screen is an initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION.
Safety in Our Cinema:
As you return to our physical space, your health and safety is our top priority. To learn about all the steps we have taken to prepare and our new procedures visit our Welcoming You Back page.
Real Art Ways Cinema is designated Cinema Safe. Learn more about Cinema Safe HERE Dough
Real Art Ways Science on Screen® season invites you to experience the unique combination of a feature film and a relevant talk from a notable local figure in science.
Dough:
“Dough is sweet, often funny and always non-threatening, a movie for those who wish the intractable realities of the world would just disappear.” – NY Times
An old Jewish baker (Jonathan Pryce) sees his struggling business boom when his young apprentice (Jerome Holder) accidentally drops marijuana into the dough.
Pre-Film Talk | 6:30 PM
The Chemistry of Cannabis: The Binding of Cannabinoid Compounds in the Brain and Cannabis’s New Role in Public Health with Dr. Jeff Rawson, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
Speaker Bio:
Jeff Rawson received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Duke University in 2014. He was a research fellow at Jülich Research Center in Germany from 2015-2018, where he supervised one bachelor thesis and two master theses. Now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Dr. Rawson has mentored about ten graduate students and several undergraduates. Science on Screen is an initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION.
Updates to Our Cinema:
As you return to our physical space, your health and safety is our top priority. To learn about all the steps we have taken to prepare and our new procedures visit our Welcoming You Back page. Real Art Ways Cinema is designated Cinema Safe. Learn more about Cinema Safe HERE To register for this free event, click here.
Real Art Ways presents an artist conversation surrounding the work in Robin Crookall’s solo exhibition, Part Fact, Part Aspect. Joining Crookall is artist, architect, and writer Aude Jomini. This conversation will explore Crookall’s conceptual and material considerations while creating her photographs. Crookall’s photographs are deceivingly simple images which do not reveal their secret until the viewer takes a closer look. What appears to be observational photographs of architecture becomes meticulously crafted sets made of cardboard, hot glue, and other “low craft” materials. This event will also be broadcast on our Facebook page.About the Panelists:
Robin Crookall is a 2021 finalist in The Print Centers’ 95th Annual International Competition. In Fall 2020 she completed a residency and solos show at Penumbra Foundation in New York City. Crookall is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in photography from The New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2016, Crookall recieved her MFA from New York University. In 2015 she completed a solo show at Seattle’s 4Culture Gallery and her post bacc at University of Montana. Crookall is currently living in Brooklyn and working on a self published book of images. Aude Jomini is a Swiss-American artist and designer pursuing collaborative and cross-disciplinary projects in art and architecture. She holds a BFA in Painting from RISD and a M-ARCH from Yale School of Architecture. She is a Senior Associate at Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, and has served 5 years on Artspace’s Curatorial Advisory Board. She has also worked at Printed Matter Inc, Brooklyn Museum, and as a freelance designer.Click Here for the exhibition catalogue, featuring an essay by Aude Jomini.
To register for this free event, click here.
4 outstanding Black artists and writers will take part in an online conversation sparked by Felandus Thames’ The Things That Haunt Me Still, on view at Real Art Ways, in Hartford, Connecticut. The dialogue will feature artist Felandus Thames, writers Kiese Laymon (Heavy: An American Memoir) and Charlie R. Braxton (Cinders Rekindled) and will be moderated by artist Noel W. Anderson. This event will also be broadcast on our Facebook page.About the Panelists:
Noel W. Anderson is an artist, and Assistant Professor in Printmaking at NYU. Anderson holds a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan, an MFA from Indiana University, and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale. He was recently included in the Studio Museum of Harlem’s exhibition Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet, and Contemporary Art. 
Kiese Laymon from Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of the bestselling Heavy: An American Memoir, which won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. 
Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright and journalist born in McComb, Mississippi. He has published two volumes of poetry, Cinders Rekindled (2013), and Ascension from the Ashes (1991). His poetry has appeared in literary journals The Black Nation, Black American Literature Forum, Cutbanks, Drumvoices Review, Eyeball Literary Magazine, Shout Out UK, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, The Transnational and others. 
Felandus Thames is a conceptual artist living and practicing in the greater New York area. Born in Mississippi, Thames holds an MFA from Yale. He has been included in exhibitions at the Kravets Wehby Gallery, Galerie Myrtis, Tilton Gallery, Heather James Gallery, Charles H. WrightMuseum, USF Contemporary Art Museum, International Center for Printmaking New York, and the African American Museum of Philadelphia. Season Opener
The Riverwood Poetry Series kicks off online with a reading by John Surowiecki from his new book – Burger King of the Dead.
Meriden, Connecticut native, John Surowiecki, journalist, copywriter, teacher, and freelance writer, will launch his latest book, Burger King of the Dead and will include readings from his upcoming 15th book of poetry, The Place of the Solitaires: Poems with Titles by Wallace Stevens. As well as books of poetry, he has written a novel, Pie Man, which won the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel in 2017. Other awards include Artist of the Year by the Meriden Arts Council, the Pegasus Award for Verse Drama, Second Place in the 2006 Sunken Garden National Competition, and many contests. His play, My Nose and Me [A TragedyLite or TragiDelight in 33 Scenes] was presented at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, UConn, and elsewhere. His poetry has been published in journals too numerous to list. He lives with his wife, Denise, in Amston, Connecticut. An open mic will start after the reading by John Surowiecki.[ Register for this free online event HERE]
Oscar buzz is in the air…so let’s talk about it!
This month, we’re focusing on Oscar nominated films! Real Art Ways showed eight of the nominated films…and the Oscar Shorts are coming in April.
Join our always-lively Cinema Coordinator Ian Ally-Seals, and sidekick Front-of-House staffer Rae Caldwell, as they get you sharing.
Details:
You can register HERE
Any questions please email our Cinema Coordinator, Ian Ally-Seals at iallyseals@realartways.org
To register for this free event, click here.
Real Art Ways exhibiting artist Catalina Ouyang is joined by writer and art historian Catherine Damman for a conversation surrounding the work in Ouyang’s solo exhibition, THE SIREN. Ouyang and Damman will engage in a dialogue covering the conceptual, formal, and material aspects of Ouyang’s sculptural approach to narrative and history. This event will also be broadcast on our Facebook page.About the Panelists:
Catalina Ouyang’s solo exhibitions include: it has always been the perfect instrument at Knockdown Center (Queens, NY); marrow at Make Room (Los Angeles, CA); fish mystery in the shift horizon at Rubber Factory (New York, NY); blood in D minor at Selena Gallery (Brooklyn, NY); and an elegy for Marco at the Millitzer Gallery (St. Louis, MO). Ouyang has attended residencies at Shandaken: Storm King (New Windsor, NY), the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY), OBRAS (Evoramonte, Portugal), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL), with residencies forthcoming at the Vermont Studio Center and MASS MoCA. Ouyang is a 2020-21 Studio Artist at Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY). Ouyang has received awards from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Puffin Foundation, the Santo Foundation, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Ouyang received an MFA from Yale University and is based in New York. 
Catherine Dammanis currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Wesleyan University and a Core Lecturer at Columbia University. Previously, she held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities and a Chester Dale Predoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art. With the support of a 2020 Terra Foundation for American Art Research Grant, she is at work on her monograph, which radically reconceptualizes the formation of “performance” in the 1970s. Her writing can be found in Artforum, Bookforum, 4Columns, BOMB, Frieze, Art in America, and elsewhere. To register for this free event, click here.
Real Art Ways Science on Screen® season invites you to experience the unique combination of a feature film and a relevant talk from notable local figures in science.
Real Art Ways is pleased to host an online panel discussion, followed by a Q&A, on the new documentary M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity. Artists Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher, mathematician Dr. Timothy Goldberg, and musician Rachael Elliott, will join Cinema Coordinator Ian Ally-Seals in a conversation on Escher and how his work has influenced each panelist’s professional practice. M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity is available to rent through Real Art Ways Virtual Cinema HERE.
About the panelists: Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher collaborate in multidimensional and large-scale multimedia to explore new technologies and use them to express immense ideas on a human scale. They are currently the 2020-2021 Artists in Residence at FERMILAB – National Particle Physics and Accelerator Laboratory and 2021 UMass Amherst Visiting Artists. Recent projects include PI Project, DATAATADATA: Everything and Nothing at The Invisible Dog Art Center and DATAATADATA:3-Sphere at ODETTA. Dr. Timothy Goldberg is an Associate Professor of Mathematics in the Donald and Helen Schort School of Mathematics and Computing Sciences at Lenoir–Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. His mathematical interests are primarily in geometry. Rachael Elliott is a versatile performer who is active in classical, new music, and improvised rock and pop. She is best known as the founding member of the genre-bending music group, Clogs. Ms. Elliott may also be heard on recordings by The National, My Brightest Diamond, and Thomas L. Read, and in films including Turn the River and Colony. Science on Screen is an initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION. Image: “Hand With Mirror” by M.C. Escher © The M.C. Escher Company B.V. Baarn – The Netherlands, courtesy of Zeitgeist Films The Riverwood Poetry Series continues with Max Early and Cheryl Savageau.
Max Early is a recent graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ MFA Creative Writing program. He has received fellowships and residencies from Taos Summer Writers’ Conference, School for Advanced Research’s Indigenous Writer, Orion in the Wilderness with the Omega Institute, and Writing By Writers. Early is the author of Ears of Corn: Listen (3: A Taos Press).
He is also an established potter from the Pueblo of Laguna. His clans are Tsina Hanu (Turkey People) and Kwaya Waashch’ee (child of the Bear Clan). Early lives in the village of Paguate, NM.
Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki) poet, a memoirist is the author of Out of the Crazywoods, a memoir that navigates her experience of living with bipolar/manic depressive illness; and three collections of poetry – Mother/Land, an “unhistory” of the Northeast; Dirt Road Home, which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Home Country. She has won Fellowships in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Program, and is a three-time fellow at MacDowell. Her children’s book, Muskrat Will Be Swimming, was a Smithsonian Notable Book and won the Skipping Stones Award for children’s environmental literature and the Wordcraft Circle’s Best Children’s Book of the Year award. Savageau mentored Native writers through Wordcraft Circle of Native Poets and Storytellers, and was awarded Mentor of the Year in 1998.
She has taught workshops through Gedakina, and is former editor of Dawnland Voices 2.0. Her work has appeared most recently in Yellow Medicine Review, The Cape Cod Review, and Hinchas de Poésia, and is widely anthologized. She teaches Indigenous literatures and creative writing at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.
An open mic will start after the readings by Max Early and Cheryl Savageau. To sign up, please send an email to riverwoodpoetry@yahoo.com[ Register HERE]
Join us online on the Second Tuesday of the month through May 2021. Each night has an open mic and a poetry reading featuring regionally – or nationally – known poets.
Films and shows can provide entertainment, connection, knowledge, comfort, and conversation.
And, many of us are watching more at home than ever before…so let’s talk about it!
Join us for an hour-long conversation, co-facilitated by cinema coordinator Ian Ally-Seals and front of house staffer Rae Caldwell
Have essential viewing to share?
Looking for recommendations?
In this open-ended chat, everyone will have space to share and connect. We hope you can join us!
Details:
You can register HERE
Any questions please email our Cinema Coordinator, Ian Ally-Seals at iallyseals@realartways.org
Films and shows can provide entertainment, connection, knowledge, comfort, and conversation.
And, many of us are watching more at home than ever before…so let’s talk about it!
Join us for an hour-long conversation, facilitated by our always-lively Cinema Coordinator Ian Ally-Seals, and sidekick Front-of-House staffer Rae Caldwell.
In this open-ended chat, everyone will have space to share and connect. We hope you can join us!
Details:
You can register HERE
Any questions please email our Cinema Coordinator, Ian Ally-Seals at iallyseals@realartways.org
The Riverwood Poetry Series continues with Karen Skolfield
Karen Skolfield’s book “Battle Dress” (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book “Frost in the Low Areas” (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; she’s the poet laureate for Northampton, MA for 2019-2022. Learn more about her work at www.karenskolfield.com
An open mic will start after the reading by Karen Skolfield. To sign up, please send an email to riverwoodpoetry@yahoo.com[ Register HERE]
Join us online on the Second Tuesday of the month through May 2021. Each night has an open mic and a poetry reading featuring regionally – or nationally – known poets.
To register for this free event, click here.
Real Art Ways and ART PAPERS partner to celebrate two events—- the closing day of the group exhibition, Statues Also Die, and the launch of the Fall/Winter 2020 journal, Monumental Interventions. Artists Jeffrey Meris and Marisa Williamson will join ART PAPERS guest co-editor TK Smith, and RAW guest curator, Sarah Fritchey, in a conversation around artists who reject, subvert and revolutionize conventional traditions, concepts and materials of monument-making. Focusing on the sentient body as a receptacle for memory, a site of action, and the vessel through which we come to experience the world— the panelists will explore questions of absence, presence, memory, refusal, vulnerability, mutability, and agency. Drawing from Smith’s extensive research and writing on the history of monument-making, memorials, and the Black body, we will consider how artists are looking to ephemeral forms and new symbols to shape the future of monument making. Copies of the ART PAPERS journal are available for purchase on their website, and at Real Art Ways for $10 each. You can preview the journal here.
About the panelists: TK Smith is a Philadelphia-based writer, art critic, and curator. Most recently, Smith co-edited Monumental Interventions, the Fall/ Winter 2020 issue of ART PAPERS that explores where the concerns of art intersect with those of monument and memorial. He is the curator of Virtual Remains, a group exhibition of Atlanta-based artists opening at the Atlanta Contemporary in 2021. He is currently a PhD candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware, where he researches art, material culture, and the built environment. Sarah Fritchey is a curator and writer based in New Haven, CT. She has curated projects at UMass Amherst, Queens College, The African American Museum in Philadelphia, and Franklin Street Works. Sarah is a contributor to ArtForum.com, Hyperallergic, Art New England Magazine, and Big Red & Shiny. Her practice focuses on under-represented histories, and the cultivation of an exhibition space as a site for cultural exchange, debate, education and experimentation. Born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Sarah holds an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Studio Art from Hamilton College, NY. Born in Haiti in 1991 and raised in the Bahamas, Jeffrey Meris is an artist who earned an A.A in Arts and Crafts from the University of The Bahamas, a B.F.A in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art, and an M.F.A in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2019. Meris is currently a 2020 NXTHVN Studio Fellow. Marisa Williamson is a project-based artist who works in video, image-making, installation and performance around themes of history, race, feminism, and technology. She has produced site-specific works at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (2013), Storm King Art Center (2016), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2016), the University of Virginia (2018), and SPACES Cleveland (2019), and by commission from Monument Lab Philadelphia (2017), and the National Park Service (2019). The Riverwood Poetry Series continues with 6 POETS: Book Launch Bonanza!
Six Connecticut poets who published new books during the time of the pandemic and have not yet launched their books into poetry audiences will read selections and introduce their work:
Ben Grossberg—Director of Creative Writing at the University of Hartford, reading from My Husband Would, which, set at the crossroads of middle age, investigates love and family—both the families we are born into and those we create for ourselves.
Debra Sansone—Teacher and Healer, reading from Third Eye on the Prize, about consciousness, creation, and mindfulness—poems which mine the rich lode to be found in the incongruities between appearance and reality.
John Stanizzi—Literature instructor at Manchester Community College, reading from P.O.N.D, a daily journey in verse and photographs to a pond near his home where he reveals the secrets of nature hidden in plain view.
Julia Paul—President of the Riverwood Poetry Series and elder law attorney, reading from Staring Down the Tracks, which gives voice to those affected by addiction, a diverse demographic often harshly judged and silenced by shame.
Nancy Kerrigan—psychiatric nurse practitioner and therapist, reading from Lucky Enough: A Journey, which traces a life shaped by an Irish Catholic youth in Chicago and on through the trials and joys of her adulthood.
Rennie McQuilkin—Connecticut Poet Laureate from 2015-2018 and winner of the Connecticut Center for the Book’s Lifetime Achievement Award, reading from Coming Through, the fourth in a series of books written in the face of mortal illness, looking for ways to prevail despite the multiple crises we face.
[Register HERE]
There is no open mic this month.Join us online on the Second Tuesday of the month through May 2021. Each night has an open mic and a poetry reading featuring regionally – or nationally – known poets.
Artist Conversation
Artist Shannon VanGyzen is joined by dancers and choreographers from the Hartford Dance Collective and drag artists Coleslaw and Severity Stone in a conversation surrounding “Family Reunion”, a collaborative performance.
Each choreographer chose one of VanGyzen’s sculptures included in her solo exhibition “Homebound” and crafted a piece exploring the conceptual and formal aspects using a diverse range of approaches. Each vignette performance is connected through a series of appropriated readings curated and read by Krystle Brown.
The filmed version by Laine Rettmer is viewable for free HERE.
Registration for this event is required.
Please register using this link.
