Hello hello. It’s been a few weeks! And we’ve been hard hard at work on a bunch of projects, hence the radio silences, as it were.

One of the new news is our inclusion in the very cool and brilliant gallery show Poetic. AestheticAn Exploration of Creativity in Poetry and Visual Art at The Art Gallery at The University of Maryland, curated by John Shipman. For this show, visual artists were paired up with poets and asked to interpret 3 poems via their visual medium. In our case, we worked with the poems of 2-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Dave Smith to produce 3 limited edition silkscreen prints for the show.

The exhibition opens on Friday January 28, 2011 with an Opening Reception from 5:00 -7:00 pm, and will be on exhibit through March 5, 2011. Works will be available for purchase at the show as well!

Poetic. Aesthetic. explores the relationship between the lyricism of poetry and the aesthetic force of the visual. By probing this relationship, Poetic. Aesthetic. also seeks to foster creative collaboration across artistic disciplines. Working with the University of Maryland Creative Writing faculty, The Art Gallery has partnered Maryland poets with national and international artists to collaborate on visual works for Poetic Aesthetic. Each visual artist will create three new works of art based on, and incorporating, the poems of one poet. Poetic. Aesthetic. exhibits works in various media, including paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings, screen-printed posters, and installations.

We chose the 3 poems of Dave Smith’s that spoke to us visually the most, and they are as follows: Goose Blind, June Bug and Come-Along:

3-color hand printed silkscreen "Goose Blind", poem by Dave Smith. Click for more info or to purchase.

5-color hand printed silkscreen print "June Bug" (poem by Dave Smith). Click for more info or to purchase.

2-color hand printed silkscreen print "Come-Along" (poem by Dave Smith). Click for more info or to purchase.

Dave Smithis the author of more than a dozen books of poems, including The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2007 (Louisiana State University Press, 2000), which was chosen as the Dictionary of Literary Biography’s Book of the Year in Poetry, and Little Boats, Unsalvaged: Poems 1992-2004 (Louisiana State University Press, 2005). He is also a novelist, critic, and editor. He has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is the Elliott Coleman Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also Department Chair of The Writing Seminars.

The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland presents the exhibition Poetic Aesthetic: An Exploration of Creativity in Poetry and Visual Art. The exhibition opens on Friday January 28, 2011 with an Opening Reception from 5:00 -7:00 pm, and will be on exhibit through March 5, 2011. The multimedia exhibition brings together visual art with contemporary poetry in original, interdisciplinary works. Text from poets Elizabeth Arnold, R. Dwayne Betts, Lucille Clifton, Michael Collier, Jehanne Dubrow, Michael Glaser, Joseph Harrison, Ethan Huang, Linda Pastan, Stanley Plumly, Dave Smith, Saul Sosnowski, Elizabeth Spires, and Joshua Weiner will be featured in works from artists Kris Chau, Audra Buck-Coleman, Bill Dunlap, John Foster, Tim Gough, Dan Grzeca, Hero Design, David Hughes, Mirta Kupferminc, Ruth Lozner, Jefferson Pinder, Strawberryluna, Julianna Swaney, and James Thorpe.

If you are in the College Park / University of Maryland area, please stop by and check out this amazing exhibit, running from  Friday January 28, 2011 with an Opening Reception from 5:00 -7:00 pm, and will be on exhibit through March 5, 2011.