Of Poets and Poems

I'd like to challenge Winona to do this. It seems like a great idea. Sharpen your pencils: St Paul looking for more sidewalk poems

If anyone is interested in working on a project like this I'd like to be in on it.

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I was at the Valentine's Day Poetry night at the Winona Arts Center last week. I hadn't originally planned on going, but I feel that as the new WAC board president, I need to go to every performance event.

I didn't know what exactly to expect. I thought there might be a handful of poetry readers waxing euphoric over sophomoric lines with a couple stellar poets leading the way... something fun, but not a must-repeat event.

Turns out it was a great evening. The theme of the evening was love poems - in honor of the upcoming St. Valentine's Day. Winona's Poet Laureate, Ken McCullough led the evening with grace, gentle encouragement and at times, bawdy renditions of poems written by himself and other poets. His co-poet for the evening, Marilyn Klinkner, also read poems of her own creation and poems that have caused her both pain and joy. These poet-leaders brought a huge stack of poetry books which they spread out on the floor in the middle of our circle for others to peruse for poems to read out loud.

After hearing a bit from the poet-leaders, others in the group of around 20 joined in. I read two of my poems - Rain & Renewal. I hadn't know that people would be reading poetry written by others - so I only had my poems with me. But I did have my computer and I looked up a few other poems. I ended up reading Wandering Aengus, by William Butler Yeats; Dove Sta Amore, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and a Carl Sandburg poem that I cannot remember the name of. Someone asked me to look up Blessing by James Wright, which I then read. 

I'm thinking that we should consider having a poetry gathering a few times per year.

Art Show

Tomorrow (Friday, March 13th) is the opening of the Winona Arts Center Annual Members Show. The opening is from 5:30 to 7:30.

I entered a glass tile mosaic - Flock.

Mosaic Class at the Winona Arts Center

Last night I taught the first of 4 2-hour mosaic classes at the Winona Arts Center. I have 7 students, all women. I have provided 12" square pieces of Wedi board, glass tiles, Weldbond, and grout. I also brought in tile nippers for the students that wanted to purchase them. One student had her own.

I started the class with a brief bit about the history of mosaics and some mosaic terms. I then explained some general mosaic design considerations, as well as the various methods of building a mosaic and showed them the examples of my mosaic work that I brought in for them to examine. The students then started going though the books I brought, looking for inspiration for their work. Once they had an idea I had them draw it on the Wedi boards - they are doing direct method mosaics - and select the glass tiles in the colors they wanted to use.

I explained soaking the tiles off of the paper and demonstrated cutting the tiles using the nippers. Everyone thought it was easier than they thought it would be to get good cuts. I explained that with mosaic it does not have to be perfect - it's a fairly forgiving art medium. We talked about the various shapes they might need to produce, how to get curved shapes and thin slices and what shapes to avoid using in their mosaic. I explained that I did not want them to get frustrated with their first attempt at mosaic work.

Some of them got started right away and ended up with several tiles glued down before the end of class, others were being more cautious about diving in. I think that any of them that come to all four classes will have no problem finishing a mosaic.

Only one student cut herself on the glass. 

Today two of the students told me they really enjoyed the class and were very glad they signed up for it. One of them told Abelisto that they thought I was a good teacher. That was nice to hear.