The Culture of Peace 2001 Web-Exhibit "What kind of peace do we seek?" |
">
">
">
">
Until you become skeleton - Kaji Aso |
In this world it takes killing fields - Michael R. Brown |
Find a member of the Standing Tribes - Richard Cambridge |
The Voyage of Bran - Veronica Heywood & Gwen McNamara |
Since cost cannot be compassed - Patrick Pierce |
Black. The warden's breath . . . - Peng-Ean Khoo |
Artists' Statements & Biographies |
"What kind of peace do we seek" Photograph & presentation by Dana C. Lipp |
TRIBES. Stamping. Earth. Earth. Earth. TRIBES. Stamping. Earth. Earth. Earth. TRIBES. Stamping. Earth. |
The folding of one thousand cranes brings long life - Valerie Lawson |
She looks up and says - ok! - Andy Levesque |
There's only space between the pieces - Dana C. Lipp |
I wait for the ships to return -Rosário Teixeira |
A day that has no place to go - Lainie Senechal |
Kaji Aso is the founder and executive director of the Kaji Aso Studio, Institute for the Arts. For twenty-five years the studio has offered experience in the visual arts, music, poetry, philosophy, and Japanese culture. Mr. Aso is retired professor of art of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. Collections: National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (registered as National Property); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Czechoslovakia; State Pushkin Museum, Moscow; Padua Museum, Italy. Awards/honors: 2000 Outstanding People of the 20th Century, IBC, Cambridge, England; 500 Leaders of Influence (registered at the U.S. Library of Congress), ABI; Proclamation of Recognition from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino; Honorary Citizen; Distinguished Bostonian; and others. Mr. Aso leads artistic adventures down major rivers of the world, including the Mississippi; the Shinano, Japan; the Seine, France; the first Soviet-American-Japanese expedition down the full length of the Volga River, USSR; the Nile, Africa; and the Tajo River in Spain and Portugal. The paintings of the Nile River Trip were exhibited at the Boston Public Library. Mr. Aso studies and performs Neapolitan and Italian Art songs as well as tenor roles from the Italian Lyric Opera repertoire. This year he completed his 32nd Boston Marathon. As a poet and musician, he recently composed, "Spring Morning Light" for solo voice, chamber choir and chamber group. Contact Information: Mr Aso can be contacted at the Kaji Aso Studio, 617 247-1719 or kajiasostudio@rcn.com. Michael R. Brown, Professor of Communications at Mount Ida College, Co-director of Optimal Avenues, General Secretary of the Poetry Olympics, Poetry Director of the 2001 World Scholar-Athlete Games and the 2001 Rhode Island Renaissance Games, author of "Falling Wallendas" (Chicago: Tia Chucha, 1994), and slam master of the Boston Poetry Slam, (every Wednesday at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge) has had his photography exhibited at the Peace Museum and several galleries in Chicago, the Civic Museum in Dublin, and the Daily Grind Coffeehouse, Bridgewater, Mass. He is originally from Pennsylvania, and has traveled and taught all over North America. He has lectured and performed his poetry in the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Forty years ago, I began writing as a way of teaching. Eventually, I wrote poetry because I had to, and I decided that poetry was probably the most artistic thing I could do, so I devoted most of my creative time to that. When I went to South Korea in 1986, I bought a camera to record my experience there. I soon became frustrated with point-and-shoot and on a trip through Hong Kong bought a completely manual Yashica which I used for the next ten years. It became clear to me that photography is a lot like writing. If I did a great deal, and threw away all the bad results, I might have a few good things worth showing. Contact Information: Michael Brown can be contacted through email: bosslam@cybercom.net. Richard Cambridge won the Master's Slam at the 1997 National Poetry Slam, and was also a member of the 1992 Boston Championship Slam Team, and 3rd Place 1993 Cambridge team. His awards include the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, and finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Publishing credits include Heartland Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Defined Providence, Red Brick Review, Squawk, Nantucket Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, and others. His one-person theater piece, "The Cigarette Papers" has received wide acclaim in both the medical and literary communities, and has been called "a tour-de-force" by the Boston Globe. He produced and co-authored "Where the Red Road Runs", a dramatic performance of poetry and music providing a Native American perspective of the European settlement of the Americas. The show had a five month run at Catch a Rising Star in Cambridge, MA. He is co-founding member of Singing with the Enemy, a troupe of poets, musicians and performance artists. Their show, "¡EMBARGO!" is a dramatic mural of poetry, music, and dance dedicated to bringing awareness to the devastating effects of the United States' 40-year economic blockade on the people of Cuba. By special invitation, the troupe performed in Havana, Cuba in July of 1998 at the historic First U.S.- Cuba Friendship Conference. And in 1999 the National Lawyers Guild of Cuba commissioned him to write and perform a poem (Letter from Cuba/Carta desde Cuba) for their yearly conference. In November, 2000 he performed at the World Solidarity with Cuba Conference, Havana, Cuba. In the fall on 1999 he released a CD, "One Shot News - Poetry of Conscience". In 2000 he was voted Best Male Performance Poet at the Boston Poetry Awards, and his troupe, Singing with the Enemy, was voted Best Poetry Troupe. He is currently working with former political prisoner Kazi Touré on a poetry-theater piece on political prisoners and prisoners of war in the U.S. He curates the Poets' Theater at Club Passim in Cambridge, MA. Veronica Heywood is a Graduate of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London and came to live in Ireland in 1968 following a family holiday where she "fell in love with the country". A circumstance for which Ireland can be justly grateful. She worked initially as an illustrator for a Dublin advertising agency but it was not long before she embarked upon her own path and held her first highly successful one person show in the Wellesley She Gallery Dublin in 1977. Since that time she has continued as a professional painter and her work has been seen in many one person, group shows and in major galleries. Her work and commissions can be found in private collections in Ireland, England, Europe and the USA. An experienced teacher she has worked on Youth Projects in Northern and Southern Ireland, taught in Colleges and Summer Schools and gives lectures and Masterclasses. She has been a member of An Taisce since 1987 and is Chairperson of Dun Laoghaire's Educational Committee and on the National Council of An Taisce. Her paintings are delicately painted in soft hues and show great sensitivity in capturing the landscape. Highly regarded for her beautiful watercolors and accepted by many as one of Ireland's leading watercolorists she is also a tireless and respected campaigner on behalf of the environment, perceiving the two "jobs" as naturally symbiotic. Combining my two commitments, I paint to warn of threats to the environment. I observe the Irish landscape closely, like the many skins of an onion unfurling for me, revealing layer after deeper later, a palimpsest, with thousands of years of exuberant life leaving faint traces on the surface. My inspiration and guide to my painterly locations being ancient epic poems from the golden age of Ireland. These paintings are my response to what may be the source. Contact Information: Veronica Heywood 38 Cross Avenue Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin Gwen McNamara is the Co-ordinator of Optimal Avenues, founded to promote the objectives stipulated by the United Nations, through the medium of International Mixed Media productions. A journalist, freelancing with the Northside People, Feedback Magazine, Age and Opportunity, Village Voice and Network News, Gwen has been writing poetry since childhood and has many poems published in the following anthologies: Between the Circus and the Sewer, Rainbows and Stone, Poetry Plus Anthology 93/94 Is Anyone Listening, and Spring poets '74. For years Gwen produced programs in AnnaLivia FM and other community radio stations, published in local newspapers and magazines. Gwen is currently collaborating exhibitions in conjunction with Denise Cassidy Painter. She collaborates on a regular basis with Veronica Heywood, in Ireland. Gwen's poetry is included in the www.mothwing.com Gallery. For The Culture of Peace exhibit, Gwen's poem "The Voyage of Bran" is being jointly presented with two paintings of the same title by Veronica Heywood. Contact Information: Gwen Mc Namara Email: optimalavenues@ireland.com Peng-Ean Khoo has lived in Sydney, Cambridge, London, and Boston, MA and currently resides in Singapore with her husband, Tat-Jen Cham. Of Chinese ethnicity and Malaysian nationality, Peng-Ean finds herself constantly caught in the crossroads of her increasingly fused international heritage. The question of post-colonial Asian identity is currently most prevalent in her poetry. She also paints, and thinks all her work somehow gravitates towards a larger more universal search - that of existence - of who we are, where we are and where we are going, as a human race. Peng-Ean read Economics at Cambridge University, UK and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Her most challenging maneuver is a juggling trick that involves switching hats between her professional and artistic pursuits. She has yet to find the one "rainbow hat" that will accommodate both. The Burden of Peace Everything, or Absolutely Nothing - My works presented in this exhibit are statements about making honest examinations and conscious choices. Honest examinations about the legacy that we have inherited, personally and as a global community. And conscious choices about the values that we want to choose for our future and future generations. This is the blessing and burden of peace. How do we manage this privileged but painful process of choosing and leaving behind without resorting to violence and force? What we do after we find peace determines whether we are ultimately left with everything, or absolutely nothing. I live in hope that the former shall prevail. Contact Information: Peng-Ean Khoo pengean@yahoo.com Valerie Lawson is the host and Slammaster at the Daily Grind Coffeehouse in Bridgewater, MA and the coordinator of the Reach Out And Read literacy program at the Children & Youth Clinic at Brockton Hospital. Her work has been published in literary journals and in the anthology, Prayers for Peace. Her poetry appears on the web at the bostonpoet.com site and photographs and poetry in the online gallery, Mothwing.com. Her photographs were included in the display for the First National College Unions Slam held in AnnArbor this year and on the Slamsisters website. Valerie was awarded Up and Coming Poet at this year's Cambridge Poetry Festival and will take part in Optimal Avenues, a mixed media cultural exchange between Massachusetts and Ireland, celebrating the international decade for the Culture of Peace. "How bend these sinews of my art & on what anvil?" -Jack Kerouac It takes discipline to weigh light and frame the eye, to allow the composition to reveal itself. One must become a camera to take photographs. The art of photography is bringing the camera to the subject. It is an art form in situ, the images reproduced in pure form, caught exactly at the moment the shutter is released, just as the photographer sees it. I have always been fascinated by tones and textures, less obvious patterns that suggest an underlying symmetry that could be seen if the frame were wide enough, our minds complex enough to understand this visual music. Contact Information: Valerie Lawson 179 Little Sandy Pond Road, Plymouth, MA 02360. (508) 833-3100. http://hometown.aol.com/vmuddypond/imagesimagery.html Andy Levesque -- poet, musician, photographer and digital artist, is author of "Walden Vision Quest and Other Poems," founder and host of Walden Pond "Poetry in the Woods" Series and webmaster of mothwing.com, a popular internet portal for poetry and art, where many examples of his writing, photography and digital artwork can be seen online. In 1998, at the request of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, he created an anthology of nature poetry that had been performed live in readings at Walden Pond. This took the form of a poster celebrating the Centennial of the State Park and Forest System in Massachusetts. Andy takes part in poetry readings throughout eastern Massachusetts and is working on a new book, due later this year. For me, moments of awe are the sparks from which my art and poetry spring to life. One of my greatest pleasures is to perform a poem about an experience of wonder in nature. As I tell the story, I re-experience the wonder. Real magic happens as the audience catches the spark and feels the wonder with me. The same is true of visual art. The energetic science of all art is to see how many awarenesses we can set to dance on the flicker of a shared thought... Contact Information: Andy Levesque andy@mothwing.com Dana C. Lipp has been engaged in an inner conflict of right brain-left brain pursuits for many years. A scientist by training but an artist at heart, he briefly but seriously considered being a potter before finally embarking upon a career peering into test tubes. As an artist, the challenge he continually faces is to freshly view the ordinary as an opportunity to be creative, not always for expressive purposes, but as a means for improvement. Mostly self-taught in photography and writing, Dana has studied wheel throwing, sculpture, figure drawing, black and white printing, and attended a few workshops on photography and also writing. As an artist, he's more drawn to the spontaneous process of creating, since darkroom work or ceramic glaze calculation were much too like the methodical work of his profession. Dana's 35 mm photographic work is varied, ranging from nature-inspired images, architectural details, street photography and most especially night photography of colorful Boston landmarks such as Quincy Market. For a few years he explored hand manipulated Polaroid SX-70 prints, which yielded impressionistic, dreamy looking images. While he prefers archival Ilfochrome prints noted for saturated colors, he is now exploring digital photography as a means to obtain similar results. Dana has appeared at Club Passim, Boston Public Library, BNN Cable TV, WERS Radio, in publication including the AMC Outdoors, the Boston Globe. His work has exhibited at many local galleries including the juried show "Image and Verse" sponsored by the Cambridge Art Association, of which he is a member. He is the poetry host of Braintree Borders (last Friday of every month at 7:30 PM) and at an outdoor event, "Poetry in the Woods, Brookwood Farm" (second Sunday of every month at 2 PM). Those interested in these venues may visit www.slamnews.com for details or contact Dana directly. My primary interest lies in photographing those images that call out to me. As I was to discover while writing in my journal, some images began speaking in a poetic voice, while others started their life just as words. A process emerged to find both the words and the images that would capture the essence of the piece. The explosive growth of the current digital revolution has made the formerly impossible now possible, enabling me to explore my vision, to realize the images of my mind's eye and to collect both the words and beautiful photoquality images into a book entitled "AfterImage". This collection is due out later this summer. Contact Information: Dana C. Lipp danalipp@att.net (781) 380-3851 Patrick Gentry Pierce is a sculptor and poet of long practice who has just relocated his sculpture and painting studios to Lowell, Massachusetts. He has had multiple one-man and group shows in various New York venues, and is now represented in Manhattan by Denise Bibro Fine Art (www.dbibrofineart.citysearch.com). In summer, Pierce exhibits with the Turtle Gallery on Deer Isle, Maine. His work is included in many private and organizational collections across America, and has been reviewed in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, and others. As a sculptor, the physical wrestling with obdurate substance enables me to cut through the distractions of the intellect and become whole in active being. Contact Information: Patrick Pierce 57, Market Street Lowell, MA 01852 (978) 458-6634 pgpierce@att.net Lainie Senechal is a poet, painter, and high school science teacher. With her students, she is active in the Environmental Justice movement. Her paintings have been exhibited both locally and abroad, in Italy and Japan. Her two most recent exhibits were a solo show "Spacial Explorations" at Bella Luna, a restaurant in Jamaica Plain, and "Night Wind" a group exhibit at the Kaji Aso Studio in Boston. This summer she will be the artist-in-residence at Imagine Studios in Amesbury, MA. A poet since the 1960s; her poems have appeared in The Chronicle (formerly The Beacon Hill Paper), Dasoku, The Umbrella, Spare Change, Ibbetson Street Press, The Aurorean and The South Boston Literary Gazette, from which she received an award for Best Poem of Issue, Fall 2000. She has read and featured at many venues in Eastern and Central Massachusetts, as well as Brown University in Rhode Island, and the National Poetry Month Festival at the Boston Public Library. In 1998. She co-authored, with Harris Gardner, a volume of poetry titled "Chalice of Eros". Her poetry also appears in the recent anthology "City of Poets". Contact Information: Lainie can be contacted through email: esenechal@erols.com. Rosário Teixeira is a surrealist painter and writer. She grew up in Europe, and survived childhood under a fascist dictatorship, during the colonial war in Africa. Of Jewish ancestry on her mother's side, she lived in a Catholic country where there was no freedom of religion, where women lost their right to vote and inherit property. She had a very strict Christian upbringing riddled with conflict and absurdity that permeated the core of society. All things considered, she could only become a surrealist painter. Painting is her passion, but writing is her survival. Her first art teacher was her educator Diamantina Barreto Negrão, an excommunicated Mother Superior from the Religious Order Carmelitas Descalças (Barefoot Carmelitas). Poet, writer and philosopher, more than painting techniques, she taught Rosário the technique of "spiritual survival," the meaning of freedom beyond the confines of the society where they lived. Rosário studied art at the Academia Francesa under Auriete Martins, Kira, and A. D'Almeida. She studied Design at the University of Lisbon School of Fine Arts, and she has a degree in Human Services from the University of Massachusetts. Rosário has exhibited her work at the Museu Carlos Machado in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Azores. In Massachusetts, she exhibited her work at Bentley College in Waltham, Cambridge Ridge and Latin High School, Boston City Hall, Daily Grind in Bridgewater, and in recent years she has participated in the annual members exhibit at the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton. In Europe, she exhibited her work in private galleries, Abracadabra and Feiticeira, and participated in international artists' exhibits. Her work can be found in private collections in Portugal, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, and the United States. She has been writing poetic prose since she was a teen. Three years ago, thinking she was signing an attendance sheet at the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, she accidentally signed up for the open mike. Since then, she has read her poems at different venues in Massachusetts. She co-featured with other local poets at the Daily Grind in Bridgewater, at the Tsongas Gallery in Concord, and at the Cantab in Cambridge. In March 2001, she featured at the Middle East at the Stone Soup Poets, and at the Cantab, in Cambridge. In April 2001, she co-featured with Tapestry of Voices at Lesley College, and at the Boston Poetry Month Festival at the Boston Public Library. Her poetry has been well received by audiences at open mikes at Borders in Framingham, Braintree and Boston; Chapel in the Pines in Eastham; Cantab, Out of the Blue Gallery, and Middle East in Cambridge; Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton; Daily Grind in Bridgewater; and Blackthorn in Easton. She has concluded the manuscripts of "Letters to the Unknown" and "Love Poems with a Twist". She is currently working on "Dream Weaver Chronicles". |
The Voyage of Bran - Veronica Heywood & Gwen McNamara |
The Gallery Behind the Falls, Winter 2001 |
<--Click on "Ibu" to return to TRIBES content page |
