Sandra Gail Lambert

Everglades Artist in Residence Program

During my most recent Everglades stay, since I'm an American, I found a little time to shop.  In-between the t-shirts and field guides, below the postcards, I discovered a book of poetry by Roger Mitchell.  In 2002 he had been one of the artists invited to spend a month in the Park.  A requirement of the residency is that you leave something behind.  His gift was this collection of poems accompanied by the sketches of Frank Duval, another artist in residence.  Here's the beginning of his poem about kayaking on Florida Bay.

"At low tide.  There might be an inch between me/and the peninsula's marly run-off./I couldn't be any closer to the earth/if I tried, here where it is land one hour/and sea the next.  Birds blow by in clouds, . . " 

Then on our way out of the park we stopped at the Anhinga Trail where Eileen Powell, the current Artist in Residence, was encouraging visitors to collaborate in the construction of a ceramic tile wall.  Way cool.    

Here, here's a fine example of our government money at work.  And it's another reason for me to keep writing. Forget the fame, the fortune, the  groupies - someday, perhaps, I'll have built a resume good enough to get chosen as an Everglades Artist in Residence.        

 

Cinema Verde Environmental Film and Arts Festival

The Third Annual Cinema Verde is happening.  Check out this chock-full schedule of events.  Once again, it's a good thing to live in Gainesville.

Her Words as Witness: Women Writers of the African Diaspora

"I just went ahead and did it."  Over and over, with each setback, this was photographer Laylah Barrayn's approach.  And now she has created a "visual love letter" to seventy-six women. Included are Sonia Sanchez, Hanifah Walidah, Tayari Jones, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Demetria Lucas.  Here's a photo gallery sample of these tributes. 

Right now the exhibit is in New York, but soon it will travel.  We should be so lucky.   

"A library is so much more than a building full of books . . . "

 
UPDATE 12/1/11: The "library phantom" has struck again!

". . . a book is so much more than pages filled with word.  This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)"  So says the note left with this paper scuplture left anonymously at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh.  "The Poetree" it's come to be called. 

 
 And then, over at the National Library of Scotland this sculpture appeared with the note "A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas (and against their exit)." 

 
 Later the Scottish Storytelling Centre received a dragon.  And now the Filmhouse, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Central Lending Library have been gifted.  

The local media says they've figured out who the artist is.  The public says they don't want to know.   

   

A Beautiful Website

 
What makes a website gorgeous?  The images?  The font?  The management of white space?  Carrie Green, a writer friend and fine, fine poet, has managed a gathering of all these elements into something graceful and soothing.  And it's easy to read.  And it presents all sorts of helpful information clearly.  It's a beautiful thing.   

I'm now trying not to think of my website as clunky and dull.   

Poetry "Bombing"

Miami poet Agustina Woodgate lurks in the racks and secretly sews snippets of poetry into clothes waiting to be sold! 

Shadow Worlds - Night Paintings by Melanie Peter

 
My neighbor Melanie Peter and Steven Huss have a show going up in the Hippodrome Theatre Gallery today.  Melanie has a series of paintings of Gainesville "After Dark."  They are lush and gorgeous and each one tells a story.  Melanie says, "I’m continuing to paint the mysterious night, and the amazing range of colors of artificial light and the objects in it’s influence."

Do not miss this chance to see Melanie's work.  The show will be up until May 9th and the gallery is open whenever the Hippodrome Theatre is, which varies.  The painting below is not available for purchase.  It lives on my bedroom wall.

 
 

 

 
Stanford Kay paints books and says "Both paintings and books are vessels for ideas, experience and memory."

 

Poetry On the Sides of Barns

 
 Instead of "See Rock City," the state of Maryland has comissioned murals with poetry to be painted on their barns.  This one is by Bill Dunlap and the poem is "Lost" by David Wagoner.

 
 
 

Matterings by Rose Simpson

 
 Notice the size of these clay pieces.  Notice the size of the door.  Rose Simpson created her art in this small room.  The staff at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe told us of arriving each morning and there it was, more done, more revealed.

And this morning I'm in my small writing studio, settled into the pillows of the day bed, a blanket pulled over me, determined to write.  Finish that essay on being a swimmer, start the new novel, revise at the old one - anything, something.  

I'm remembering being in that small gallery and placing my wheelchair on the intersection of the clay lines.  On one side the perfect square, on the other the perfect circle, each with its clean-edged cut-outs, and in front of me a huge-in-that-space woman reclining and crumbling red earth over the floor. 

That question about how to address the specifics of our lives without being categorized - Rose Simpson says "It is simply that these subjects, issues, predicaments, thought, and feelings matter and they deserve to be given the time of day." 

Somehow all this is combining in my brain into something.    

 P.S. Today's post-Santa Fe food yearning - I want that lovely woman to roll her cart of aromatic, multi-colored bowls of ingredients up beside my table and create guacamole as we watch. 

Photos of the Great Depression - in Color

These color images (1939 - 1943) from the Library of Congress, every one of them, are so worth sitting with for awhile.  I keep noticing things.  Cotton pickers who have adorned their hats, the farm auction with the well-dressed couple standing off on their own from the mass of farmers, the nail-polish on the railroad worker - so many stories.  Here are a few. 

 

Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival - The First Annual!

 
The First Annual Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival is from March 19th through the 28th, and there are so many ways to participate.  You can attend any number of the eighteen screenings of twelve different films, bring your loved ones to the day-long street fair of music, booths, and movies, hang out at one of the gallery openings, go on a guided nature outing, volunteer, or donate scads of money. 

A really good option is the All Inclusive Festival Pass - $50 gets you a VIP opening night reception, a ticket to four (update - it's now 12!) different films, reserved front row seating, and the satisfaction of supporting another one of those Gainesville events that makes us glad that we live here.   

Florida's Eden - A Weekend of Painters, Poets, Music, and Culinary Delights

This weekend Florida's Eden is having an OLO! (Orange Lake Overlook) benefit at the Windmill Gallery just south of McIntosh on 441.  Florida's Eden is a fabulous organization whose purpose is to "unite 30 counties of North Florida for the purpose of protecting our natural resources and using our environmental and creative assets to build a sustainable, prosperous economy." And they do an amazing job.

There will be plein air painting, poetry, good food, and it will be the first warm weekend in forever.  Come out and support an organization that makes good things happen. 

Painting credit: "Anne Gilroy Painting" by Melanie Peter    

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

My people are not from Russia.  I've never been there. And I can't stop thinking about these color photos from a hundred years ago.  Each one is a story.  The photographer invented his own way of taking color images and traveled throughout Russia with his dark room rail car.  The Library of Congress has these photos and Newsweek has a recent article about them. 

The Mickee Faust Club - Now Playing in Tallahassee

Mickee Faust (aka Terry Galloway) is the disaffected sewer rat brother of Florida's more well-known mouse.  His club, as paraphrased from their website, rallies around this rebellious rat bastard and peacefully converge to write, direct and perform the raucous and wily cabarets that have become Faust's hallmark. In every Faust show you’ll find a mix of political and socio-sexual satire, literary and cinematic parodies, old vaudeville, new vaudeville, original and adapted songs and some fully-staged bad jokes thrown in for good measure.

Here's a promo from Mickee Faust's Gimp Parade -

Kseniya Simonova - Ukrainian Sand Artist

 

With wide sweeps of her arms, finger flicks, and the grand casting down of handfuls of sand, Kseniya Simonova recreates her country's destruction during WWII. 

Su Blackwell - Three Dimensional Literature

 

Su Blackwell uses old books about to be tossed and revives their stories by forming the pages in sculpture. Cliche alert, but really, these take my breath away.  She says "the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air."  

  

Read this article about her process.  Go to her website.  Watching the video of her merry-go-round sculpture did something lovely for my heart.