In Response: Poets and Artists in Dialogue Exhibit

In Response celebrates the collaboration of a diverse group consisting of 16 pairs of local poets and visual artists.

Through a variety of mediums, including encaustic, ceramic, paintings, drawings, textile and collage, Sacramento area visual artists provide one half of the dialog. The contributing visual artists are Arturo Balderrama, Cynthia Charters, Fred Dalkey, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Frankie Hansbearry, Jim Hensley, Laura Hohlwein, Maggie Jimenez, Jaya King, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, Sue Menebroker McElligott, Frank Ordaz, Deborah Rhea, Daniel Schoorl, Angela Tannehill, and D.R. Wagner.

Among the 16 poets included in this dialog are the current Sacramento Poet Laureate, Indigo Moor, erstwhile Laureate, Julia Connor, Victoria Dalkey, Lisa Abraham Dominguez, Joey Garcia, Traci Gourdine, Patrick Grizzell, Ed Hensley, Laura Hohlwein, Kathryn Hohlwein, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Charlie Mariano, Arturo Mantecón, Annie Menebroker, D.R. Wagner, and Mary Zeppa. Poets/artists Susan Kelly-DeWitt, D.R. Wagner and Laura Hohlwein perform double-duty in the show, collaborating as both poets and visual artists.

The idea for the show was itself a collaboration of sorts. Co-curators Lorrie Kempf and Patrick Grizzell were installing a show in the Robert T. Matsui Gallery in City Hall when artist Arturo Balderrama and writer Charlie Mariano happened by. The two were meeting to discuss illustrations Arturo was making for a book of Charlie’s. The ensuing conversation was the genesis of this exhibition.

Poetry featured includes:

Line
I tell my beginning drawing students there is no such thing as line
(though I love line and the week before told them to draw
every kind of line they could possibly make).
This week, there is no line.
A line is just a concept.
There is no such thing as a physical line
just value next to value.
The birds I love again are back —
aligning on the straight length of wire that is not a line,
as it was not last year,
— the starlings, their wire, their pause and direction, just deeper blues
in a field of blues
in a field, deep field, of black, expanding.
This is how painters see things
— the space between the nucleus and the path (not a line)
of the electron
probably a color of some kind
probably very hard to get right
The direction of gaze
not a line with beginning or end
but a field in which one can suddenly lift in a startled
movement of living.
— Laura Hohlwein

Lisitng Image: Jaya King, Live Wire, encaustic, 24“ x 48“, 2017.