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Creative Cocktail Hour Sep 18 | 9:00 PM
Join us Thursday, September 18, from 6 to 9 PM for our Creative Cocktail Hour.
Admission is free.
We’ll have music, a food truck, custom cocktails, hands-on art-making activities, and exhibitions on view!
But most importantly, you’ll be there!

 

Solo Exhibitions:

thick, hazy, cleer, blew” Shona Macdonald

“It’s going to rain” Teilin Ding

After Progress” Adam Viens

Music

Bella’s Bartok

Food:

Paki Taco

 

 

 

Events
Riverwood Poetry Series Sep 10 | 9:00 PM
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

Season Opener! Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Sean Thomas Dougherty on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 7 pm.

There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft
drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of Charge. Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.

Sean Thomas Dougherty’s twenty books include The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Book Prize, and Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA Editions 2018) received both the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Housatonic Book Award. His many awards include two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships, the Established Artist Fellowship for Northwest Pennsylvania, a US State Department Fulbright Lectureship, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review.

Dougherty teaches writing part-time for Western Connecticut State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program and works as a Med Tech and caregiver for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries in Erie, Pennsylvania.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Riverwood Poetry Series Sep 10 | 9:00 PM
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

Season Opener! Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Sean Thomas Dougherty on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 7 pm.

There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft
drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of Charge. Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.

Sean Thomas Dougherty’s twenty books include The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Book Prize, and Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA Editions 2018) received both the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Housatonic Book Award. His many awards include two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships, the Established Artist Fellowship for Northwest Pennsylvania, a US State Department Fulbright Lectureship, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review.

Dougherty teaches writing part-time for Western Connecticut State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program and works as a Med Tech and caregiver for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries in Erie, Pennsylvania.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Get Out Sep 13 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Peele seduces, subverts and manipulates audience expectations – as the masters Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, and Stanley Kubrick did before him.” – IndieWire

“It’s a game-changer.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“By focusing the storyline on a particular form of racism — the kind that’s often disguised as peculiar envy — Get Out reveals something more insidious.” – Salon.com

“Beneath the beatific smile of 21st-century liberalism, Get Out finds the still grinning ghoulish skull of age-old servitude and exploitation unveiled during a rollercoaster ride into a very American nightmare.” – Observer (UK)

“Peele succeeds where sometimes even more experienced filmmakers fail: He’s made an agile entertainment whose social and cultural observations are woven so tightly into the fabric that you’re laughing even as you’re thinking, and vice-versa.” – TIME Magazine

98% on Rotten Tomatoes

Now that Chris and his girlfriend, Rose, have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway with Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries leads him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

Creative Cocktail Hour Sep 18 | 9:00 PM
Join us Thursday, September 18, from 6 to 9 PM for our Creative Cocktail Hour.
Admission is free.
We’ll have music, a food truck, custom cocktails, hands-on art-making activities, and exhibitions on view!
But most importantly, you’ll be there!

 

Solo Exhibitions:

thick, hazy, cleer, blew” Shona Macdonald

“It’s going to rain” Teilin Ding

After Progress” Adam Viens

Music

Bella’s Bartok

Food:

Paki Taco

 

 

 

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Us Sep 20 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Fearsomely entertaining, consistently thought-provoking and occasionally bloody scary.” – Observer (UK)

“A sharp, often funny meditation on the terrifying power of human connection.” – The Atlantic

Even as the central characters are enveloped by doom, Peele provides a haunting image of a black family that is both unsuspecting and frighteningly unfuckwithable.” – Harper’s Bazaar

93% on Rotten Tomatoes

Accompanied by her husband, son, and daughter, Adelaide Wilson returns to the beachfront home where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from the past, Adelaide grows increasingly concerned that something bad is going to happen. Her worst fears soon become a reality when four masked strangers descend upon the house, forcing the Wilsons into a fight for survival. When the masks come off, the family is horrified to learn that each attacker takes the appearance of one of them.

Diane DiMassa Hothead Paisan Book Launch & Conversation Sep 25 | 9:00 PM

 

 

You’re invited to join us Thursday, September 25, 6:30 pm for a conversation with artist and cartoonist Diane DiMassa, led by Alex Dueben, a freelance writer specializing in comics, poetry, books and art.

River Bend Bookshop is our official book partner for this event. Books will be available for purchase and signing on the night of the event.

“Diane DiMassa can thrill the female soul … fulfilling an untold number of rush-hour fantasies.” – The New York Times

“Hothead is a one-woman revolution…a far-out, hilarious reminder of how your own rage could drive you insane.” – Out Magazine

“The bible of man-hating ball busters driven over the edge of insanity.” – Sarah Schulman

“[DiMassa’s] cartooning style is electric.” – Howard Cruse

“I first met Hothead in the anthology No Straight Lines, a 40-year survey of queer comics. She stands out even among decades of cartoonists’ takes on the pressures of fitting in with heterosexual America…But DiMassa’s creation has been woefully hard to find in recent years. Thankfully, New York Review Books will publish a Hothead collection this August. The sweltering, lingering days of summer feel like the perfect time for the title character to burst back out onto the sidewalk, bat in tow.” – Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic

This fall, the New York Review of Books imprint is publishing a collection of Diane DiMassa’s 1990s comic Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. It’s a book that sits at the intersection of riot grrl culture, the zine explosion, underground comics and queer culture.

Hothead Paisan is an icon of the ’90s lesbian DIY scene, a patron saint of those who wonder if going off the deep end is the only sane response to life in modern America. Hothead begins in a murderous frenzy—taking out a variety of chauvinists and creeps—but soon deepens into a reflection on oppression, self-destruction, and living it up outside the conservative norms of the ’90s. Hothead’s rage is stoked by her inner demon, Personality #2, but sometimes tempered with the help of Roz, her friend who offers Zen wisdom and tough love, and Chicken, her cat and constant companion.

Diane DiMassa is an American artist and cartoonist best known for her contributions to alternative, feminist comic book sphere. She debuted her comic-zine Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist in 1991 and has illustrated several books, including Kathy Acker’s Pussycat Fever, Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body, and Daphne Gottlieb’s Jokes and the Unconscious. Her artwork has been featured in numerous group and solo shows across North America.She lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut and San Francisco, California.

Alex Dueben is a freelance writer and independent scholar based in New England who has written for The Believer, Vulture, The Millions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other publications. He is the writer and editor of the artist monograph Hurricane Nancy.

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Nope Sep 27 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Every genre Peele invokes is a flytrap for social meanings, and you can’t watch this cowboys-and-aliens monster movie without entertaining some deep thoughts about race, ecology, labor, and the toxic, enchanting power of modern popular culture.” – New York Times

“A wild but self-aware mashup of sci-fi and westerns…” – The New Yorker

“It’s extremely sophisticated, this film. And it’s very mysterious in its structure.” – Monocle

83% on Rotten Tomatoes

A man and his sister discover something sinister in the skies above their California horse ranch, while the owner of a nearby theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon.

Instantiations – Sept 28 Sep 28 | 4:00 PM
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2025 to May 2026. Check out the full schedule here!
Sept 28 Performance:

Stephen Haynes-trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn

Jerome Deupree-drums

Steve Lantner-piano

Josh Roseman-trombone

Joe Morris-bass

Instantiations – Sept 28 Sep 28 | 4:00 PM
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2025 to May 2026. Check out the full schedule here!
Sept 28 Performance:

Stephen Haynes-trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn

Jerome Deupree-drums

Steve Lantner-piano

Josh Roseman-trombone

Joe Morris-bass

Instantiations – Sept 28 Sep 28 | 4:00 PM
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2025 to May 2026. Check out the full schedule here!
Sept 28 Performance:

Stephen Haynes-trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn

Jerome Deupree-drums

Steve Lantner-piano

Josh Roseman-trombone

Joe Morris-bass

Live Arts
Diane DiMassa Hothead Paisan Book Launch & Conversation Sep 25 | 9:00 PM

 

 

You’re invited to join us Thursday, September 25, 6:30 pm for a conversation with artist and cartoonist Diane DiMassa, led by Alex Dueben, a freelance writer specializing in comics, poetry, books and art.

River Bend Bookshop is our official book partner for this event. Books will be available for purchase and signing on the night of the event.

“Diane DiMassa can thrill the female soul … fulfilling an untold number of rush-hour fantasies.” – The New York Times

“Hothead is a one-woman revolution…a far-out, hilarious reminder of how your own rage could drive you insane.” – Out Magazine

“The bible of man-hating ball busters driven over the edge of insanity.” – Sarah Schulman

“[DiMassa’s] cartooning style is electric.” – Howard Cruse

“I first met Hothead in the anthology No Straight Lines, a 40-year survey of queer comics. She stands out even among decades of cartoonists’ takes on the pressures of fitting in with heterosexual America…But DiMassa’s creation has been woefully hard to find in recent years. Thankfully, New York Review Books will publish a Hothead collection this August. The sweltering, lingering days of summer feel like the perfect time for the title character to burst back out onto the sidewalk, bat in tow.” – Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic

This fall, the New York Review of Books imprint is publishing a collection of Diane DiMassa’s 1990s comic Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. It’s a book that sits at the intersection of riot grrl culture, the zine explosion, underground comics and queer culture.

Hothead Paisan is an icon of the ’90s lesbian DIY scene, a patron saint of those who wonder if going off the deep end is the only sane response to life in modern America. Hothead begins in a murderous frenzy—taking out a variety of chauvinists and creeps—but soon deepens into a reflection on oppression, self-destruction, and living it up outside the conservative norms of the ’90s. Hothead’s rage is stoked by her inner demon, Personality #2, but sometimes tempered with the help of Roz, her friend who offers Zen wisdom and tough love, and Chicken, her cat and constant companion.

Diane DiMassa is an American artist and cartoonist best known for her contributions to alternative, feminist comic book sphere. She debuted her comic-zine Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist in 1991 and has illustrated several books, including Kathy Acker’s Pussycat Fever, Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body, and Daphne Gottlieb’s Jokes and the Unconscious. Her artwork has been featured in numerous group and solo shows across North America.She lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut and San Francisco, California.

Alex Dueben is a freelance writer and independent scholar based in New England who has written for The Believer, Vulture, The Millions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other publications. He is the writer and editor of the artist monograph Hurricane Nancy.

On Screen
The Roses Sep 11 | 2:45 PM

Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing — as Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment ignites. The Roses is a reimagining of the 1989 classic film The War of the Roses, based on the novel by Warren Adler.

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Get Out Sep 13 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Peele seduces, subverts and manipulates audience expectations – as the masters Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, and Stanley Kubrick did before him.” – IndieWire

“It’s a game-changer.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“By focusing the storyline on a particular form of racism — the kind that’s often disguised as peculiar envy — Get Out reveals something more insidious.” – Salon.com

“Beneath the beatific smile of 21st-century liberalism, Get Out finds the still grinning ghoulish skull of age-old servitude and exploitation unveiled during a rollercoaster ride into a very American nightmare.” – Observer (UK)

“Peele succeeds where sometimes even more experienced filmmakers fail: He’s made an agile entertainment whose social and cultural observations are woven so tightly into the fabric that you’re laughing even as you’re thinking, and vice-versa.” – TIME Magazine

98% on Rotten Tomatoes

Now that Chris and his girlfriend, Rose, have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway with Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries leads him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Us Sep 20 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Fearsomely entertaining, consistently thought-provoking and occasionally bloody scary.” – Observer (UK)

“A sharp, often funny meditation on the terrifying power of human connection.” – The Atlantic

Even as the central characters are enveloped by doom, Peele provides a haunting image of a black family that is both unsuspecting and frighteningly unfuckwithable.” – Harper’s Bazaar

93% on Rotten Tomatoes

Accompanied by her husband, son, and daughter, Adelaide Wilson returns to the beachfront home where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from the past, Adelaide grows increasingly concerned that something bad is going to happen. Her worst fears soon become a reality when four masked strangers descend upon the house, forcing the Wilsons into a fight for survival. When the masks come off, the family is horrified to learn that each attacker takes the appearance of one of them.

Filmmaker Spotlight Series: Jordan Peele – Nope Sep 27 | 2:45 PM
The film will be followed by a conversation led by Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, an Associate Professor (Tenure) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Ogbunu is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, evolution, and society.
As the founding director of the Yale Initiative for Science and Society, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture.  Brandon is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED and is the author of a column at Undark Magazine entitled “Selective Pressure.” He has written for a range of publications, including Scientific American, Quanta MagazineThe Undefeated, The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and several other venues.
Another special guest for this post-film conversation is Truth Powell. Truth Powell is a senior at Greater Hartford Academy Of The Arts. With a backround in Theater, Poetry, Music, and Photography, Truth found his love for cameras through the lens of a DSLR passed down through his family. Today, Truth writes and directs short films as his love for film continues to grow. Inspired by Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, and Spike Lee, Truth incorporates revolution and activism in much of his work. Truth was also a student apprentice during the Eye on Video program this summer at Real Art Ways.

“Every genre Peele invokes is a flytrap for social meanings, and you can’t watch this cowboys-and-aliens monster movie without entertaining some deep thoughts about race, ecology, labor, and the toxic, enchanting power of modern popular culture.” – New York Times

“A wild but self-aware mashup of sci-fi and westerns…” – The New Yorker

“It’s extremely sophisticated, this film. And it’s very mysterious in its structure.” – Monocle

83% on Rotten Tomatoes

A man and his sister discover something sinister in the skies above their California horse ranch, while the owner of a nearby theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon.

Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry Series Sep 10 | 9:00 PM
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

Season Opener! Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Sean Thomas Dougherty on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 7 pm.

There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft
drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of Charge. Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.

Sean Thomas Dougherty’s twenty books include The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Book Prize, and Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA Editions 2018) received both the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Housatonic Book Award. His many awards include two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships, the Established Artist Fellowship for Northwest Pennsylvania, a US State Department Fulbright Lectureship, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review.

Dougherty teaches writing part-time for Western Connecticut State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program and works as a Med Tech and caregiver for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries in Erie, Pennsylvania.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Visual Arts
Megafauna
(these desperate earthly forms)

Ezra Moth
Jun 19 |
Real Art Ways presents Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms), a solo exhibition by Real Art Awardee Ezra Moth. 

My work teeters on the edge of speculation and functionality, between science fiction and practicality, and it always deals with the intersection of ecology and queer liberation. It is not medium specific and has been presented in the form of sculptures, speculative agriculture interventions, and performance artworks. Largely, I hope to present thoughtful and radical alternatives to the climate catastrophe, centering nonbinary and nonhuman perspectives in these future visualizations.  

My materials are often living organisms: plants, algae, fungi, and bacteria. Part mad scientist and part drag persona, my art practice ricochets from sublime hopefulness to postapocalyptic despair, between humor and profundity. I often begin with a specific problem: unsustainable industrial agriculture practices, pharmaceutical companies’ monopolization of access to hormones, or water pollution – and from there, my storytelling, sculptures, and installations offer hypothetical and fantastical solutions.

I work in a community biology lab, hybridizing fennel plants for use in hormone replacement therapy. Alongside its strong estrogenic properties, fennel is also a host plant for native swallowtail caterpillars. These tall herbaceous bodies and their metamorphosizing residents had me imagining a future where gender is not regulated by policy or monopolized by pharmaceutical companies. Could I grow a garden of hormones in my backyard, and with those gardens, could my trans friends harvest and synthesize their own gender?

Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms) presents the process of that research: concentrated phytoestrogen extracted from the mutant plants created in my laboratory. Refrigerated and surrounded by traces of the scientific process, these vials of liquid are connected via a metaphorical umbilicus to a vast bioplastic form that inhabits the gallery space. This thing is neither vessel nor human nor animal. It is a specter that faces toward the present violence against trans bodies. A monstrous amalgamation of this fear: a symbiotic sludge of gelatine and seaweed and fennel and flesh.

About the Artist

Ezra Moth is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages with ecology, queer identity, and the Anthropocene. Immersed in fantasy and dystopian futures, their installations contrive narratives through the lens of eco-feminism. Having studied sustainable agriculture and sculpture at UCONN, and performance art at Goldsmiths, University of London, their work spans both scientific curiosities and dreamlike utopias. Their installations and performances have been presented internationally in exhibitions and residencies such the Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival in Greece, Ortegay Y Gasset projects in Gowanus, RIXC center for new media culture in Latvia, Joya Arte + Ecologia in Spain, and the Queens Botanical Garden. They are currently based between Tolland, CT and Brooklyn, NY. 

 

After Progress
Adam Viens
May 15 |
Real Art Ways presents After Progress, a solo exhibition by Adam Viens 

Viens is a mixed-media artist whose work delves into concepts of time, perception, memory, and philosophy. As a physical representation of intellectual and emotional processes, Viens’ work presents a combination of frantic, improvisational technique and slow, interpretive contemplation.  The result is admittedly abstract however, frequently edging in and out of vague spatial representation. 

After Progress is predicated on personal interpretation, explains Viens, “The work is not didactic, it is not a declaration. It is an invitation…Being an artist becomes a lens in which we see all of life and yet,  who we are in the wider world requires different ways of thinking; different ways of being.  These works explore some of those component parts within the variety of experiences and why there tends to be a disconnect between what we feel our lives should be and how we actually live them.  Numerous visual languages are used to create tension.   The works include both natural processes (the raw chemistry and elemental properties of the medium) as well as mark- making used in trade work, scrawling  done by the human hand, and large sweeping gestures.  This alludes to the conflict between thinking and feeling.”  

After Progress is curated by Peter Albano.

About the Artist

Viens is a mixed media artist from Connecticut.  Born in December, 1989, in Rockville, CT, Adam was raised one of five siblings to a single mother and grew up playing in the woods on their property amongst the refuse of what used to be an unofficial town dump.  Adam was initially self taught but did attend Manchester Community College in his early twenties where he fine tuned his skills and understanding with the help of the fantastic faculty at the time.  No fancy programs or degrees.  Adam continues pursuing a career as an artist in his converted barn studio in Middletown, CT.  In 2019 he started a contracting company, EarthSake Initiatives that specializes in design-driven, eco- renovations and in 2023 started a sister company, EarthSake Studios that utilizes reclaimed materials from job sites to make unique, bespoke furniture.  While still participating in exhibitions throughout New England, Viens art and furniture can be found at Monger’s Market in Bridgeport, CT.

 

 

thick, hazy, cleer, blew
Shona Macdonald
Jun 19 |
Real Art Ways presents thick, hazy, cleer, blew, a solo exhibition by Shona Macdonald. 
thick, hazy, cleer, blew explores the effects of weather as ephemeral, mundane records of our daily lives. In addition to weather and forecasts, these three bodies of work explore the atmosphere and atmospheric perspective.
‘The Vapors so Whiten’ series pulls imagery out of layers of dusty pigment applied to toned paper. Small in scale, these works depict either cars driving in and out of visibility on roads with no beginning or end.  With no points of reference, it is often uncertain in which direction the vehicles are heading. In the ‘Car, Eyes’ series, floating cars bob amidst unidentified bodies of water; adrift, they are rendered useless. The third series, ‘Blow In’ suggests images of laundry, flags, and leaves, all being buffeted by the effects of wind. 
Macdonald engages with qualities of atmosphere through slow and muted approaches. The laborious, hand-made nature of her work leads to a more embodied experience of what the weather means and how it affects us physically and imaginatively while the indecipherable atmosphere she conjures from multiple layers of pencil marks coupled with hazy imagery leads, ultimately, to a kind of disorienting opacity.

Curator’s Comment:

Shona Macdonald’s lush and intimate drawings reflect on our complicated relationship with weather. In a sleight of hand, the work depicts the molecules around its subject matter as well as the subject matter itself. Her laborious attention to the space between the viewer and the viewed is a demonstration of envelopment. What happens when the water surrounds us? We float; or we don’t.

Weather effects our sense of time.  Weather patterns cycle, as with our orbit, on a scale that is greater than our ability to fully understand it.  Some would say that human action holds an insignificant weight against the scale of these orbital systems. The world will spin and wash itself occasionally.

The subject matter in these works are engulfed by atmosphere; whether in its liquid form, a dense mist, or thick air.  The result is a lopsided example of conflict.  The cars (nor the cloth) have any real power within these compositions.  They hang at the whim of a grander order- one made of microscopic elements; molecules, particles, pigments.  I find an odd peace in the hopeless future of these characters, as they crowdsurf across color towards an unknown fate.

This work makes me feel small in the greatest of ways.  It reminds me of humanity’s pixel-sized significance within the history of what Carl Sagan called “[our] pale blue dot.”  The majority of my existence has been spent feeling in control, under control, or out of control. But, when I view these works I don’t consider control at all.  I feel like a particle; amidst a wave of something I’m not meant to understand.  I like that feeling.

Acquiescence is the reluctant acceptance of something without protest.  Politically, I find this concept revolting but, spiritually I find it necessary. At some point, we’ve all been caught in a storm.  Whether we dodge the rain, seek shelter, or face the skies, there comes a point where our shoulders drop, and we acquiesce as the sky comes falling down.

-Peter Albano

About the Artist

Shona Macdonald was born in Scotland and currently lives in Western Massachusetts. Selected solo exhibitions include McDonough Museum of Art, (2023), Zillman Art Museum, (2020-21), Brattleboro Art Center and Museum (2018), Roswell Art Museum, (2011), Tarble Arts Center (2015), Gridspace, (2014) Engine Room, Wellington, New Zealand, (2010), Proof Gallery, Boston, MA (2009), Reeves Contemporary, NY, NY (2008), Den Contemporary, LA, CA, (2007) and Galerie Refugium, Berlin, Germany, (2002.)  Two person exhibitions include the Ballina Art Center, Ireland (2022), Dayton Art Center (2018,) and Linden Sculpture Garden (2012.)  She has shown in over 100 group exhibitions across the United States, UK, Australia, and Canada.  Reviews of her work include Art in America, Art News, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Sacramento Bee, and Boston Globe.  She has been an invited Visiting Artist at over fifty institutions, including The University of Wyoming (2023), Georgia State University (2007), the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary, Canada, (both 2002). Shona Macdonald is a 2009 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award.  Selected artist residencies include UCross, Ragdale, VCCA, Roswell, Kimmel Harding Nelson, and internationally, at Can Serrat, Spain,  Ballinglen and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, both Ireland.  

 

 

It’s Going to Rain
Tielin Ding
Sep 18 |
Real Art Ways presents It’s Going to Rain, a solo exhibition by Real Art Award winner Tielin Ding

Before a storm comes, 

swirling vortices of air, 

bring leaves floating and in motion. 

Brooms, fans, umbrellas; 

gathering, murmuring; 

It’s a party with flickering lights. 

Yes, it‘s going to rain. 

 

It’s Going to Rain is a multimedia exhibition that reflects on the relationships between objects, environments, and their shared states of uncertainty.

John Cage asked, “When a truck passes by a music school or a factory, which is more musical?”  Tielin Ding approaches his exhibition It’s Going to Rain, with a similar spirit; pondering the buildup of energy before a storm and the tension that precedes a natural eruption.  When does the storm truly begin?

The umbrella, a common motif in this exhibition, symbolizes protection and faith. The color yellow recurs throughout his practice. He considers the yellow lines on roads suggesting a sense of both continuation and separation. By focusing on the friction and pulse between things and their environments It’s Going to Rain presents a look at the moments between safety and uncertainty, logic and whimsy.

 

About the Artist

Tielin is a wanderer, observer and mixed-media process-based artist interested in repetition of forms and movements; operation of chances and metaphors. In his installation works, he likes displacing objects, shifting their scales and relocating their context, aiming for building its own constellation with a leap of thought and a slow surprise. 

He holds the belief that “At the center of a mirage, is its transformation”. “Chance favors a prepared mind.” A lot of times, inspiration comes from his observation while wandering, while playing, while living. Sometimes, it can be mystic and improvisational. He has been very interested in drifting in the field of language and space, risking getting lost from point A to point B.

Born in 1996 in Chongqing, China. Tielin Ding is a wanderer, observer and mixed-media artist currently based in New York and Shanghai. He graduated from MFA in photography and related media at Parsons School of Design, The New School in NYC with a bachelor’s background in architecture engineering at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. He exhibited his works at Site Santa Fe in New Mexico, Brand Library in California, Garrison Art Center/BAU Gallery/The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana, Noorderlicht International Photo Festival in the Netherlands and Reclaim Award in Germany. Past residency he attended includes Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, Abbott Watts Photography Residency at Monson Arts, Nars Foundation Satellite Residency on Governors Island, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation residency, Millay Arts, VCCA and Volland Foundation.