I Read the News Today, Oh Boy! Exhibit

"I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!"

Visual Artists and Poets Respond to the News

In a Creative Collaboration of New Works

A Unique Media Exhibit: June 22 - July 29, 2011

Under the Direction of Benicia Poet Laureate, Ronna Leon

Sponsored and hosted by the Benicia Public Library

Marilyn O'Rourke Gallery

150 East L Street

Benicia, CA  94510

Twenty-eight highly recognized poets and visual artists from fourteen California Bay Area and Central coast cities will collaborate in their creative response to the news.  Participants were selected from a national competition and paired into fourteen teams according to news categories of coverage.  Each team has selected one news article and will translate that story into an experiece of the human heart.

The poems and visual works of these creative teams will inspire us to ask and revisit questions we hold about the role, value, and consequence of The News in our lives and our society.

Opening Reception: June 30, 7-9 p.m.

The Heart Roused: The News Through the Artist's Eye

My heart rouses

thinking to bring you news

of something

that concerns you

and concerns many men.  Look at

what passes for the new.

You will not find it there but in

despised poems.

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

"That is William Carlos Williams, on poetry as the news we need.  A doctor concerned with our welfare, he is writing of his heart's desire to bring us news from despised poems; he said, it is dfficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.  We die, not just for hard-hitting, earth-shaking, late-breaking headline news, but for news the way artists have always grappled with, redeemed, and shared it with us.  This news is as old as the hills.  Art heeds and seeds the "new" and needed in the news.  I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy! will show us our world through the artist's lens, an ancient and the most enduring way we get the news without which we die miserably every day.  I am honored to be part of this creative collaborative venture."

Dr. Barbara Mossberg, Host, The Poetry Slow Down, KRXA, 540 AM ("news you need")

BarbaraMossberg.com and Poet in Residence, Pacific Grove, CA.

For more information on the Exhibit Participants, their cities and news story topics please see the Press Release document below.

Exhibit Poets Reading

Thursday, July 28th

7 - 9 p.m.

Final event in conjunction with exhibit: "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!"

Poems created for the exhibit will be read as well as related work by distinguished poets who participated in this project.

Poets Daniel Cooper from Concord, Sandra Lee Stillwell from Benicia, Maria Rosales from Martinez, Joel Fallon from Benicia, Mary Rudge from Alameda, Donna Rudolph from Benicia, Lois Requist from Benicia, Ken McKeon from Berkeley, Jannie Dresser from Crockett, Joe Martino from Benicia, and Valerie Ibarra from San Francisco will be reading.  Poems by David Starkey from Santa Barbara, Barbara Mossberg from Pacific Grove, and Nils Peterson from Santa Clara will also be heard. 

For more information, see Press Release below.

SYMPOSIUM: Art Relation to News: 

A Panel Disucssion in conjunction with the "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy" art and poetry exhibit.

Saturday, July 16th

2 - 4 p.m.

Dona Benicia Room

PANEL:

• Lois Kazakoff:  Deputy Editorial Page Editor, San Francisco Chronicle,
• Marilyn Bardet:  Artist and Community Activist,
• DeWitt Cheng:  Art Critic, East Bay Express,
• Marc Garman:  Editor, Vallejo Independent Bulletin,
• Connie Post:  Host, Valona Deli Poetry Reading Series,
• Larnie Fox:  Executiave Director, Arts Benicia
  

Online articles on the exhibit can be found at the following locations:

Conra Costa Times

San Francisco Examiner

Article on the symposium:  Benicia Patch

Article on the Poetry Reading: Vallejo Times Herald