Confluences: Writing, Composing, and Making Art from (or based on) Art: Artists' Talk & Poetry Videos!

November 6, 2022 at 3 pm at the Nordic Center, 23 North Lake Avenue, Duluth, MN Book Celebration & Reception

A Poetry Reading and Artists' Talk:

"Confluences: Writing, Composing, and Making Art from Art"

by poet Sheila Packa and Sara Pajunen (musician, composer, artist), Wendy Durrwachter (musician & composer) Kathy McTavish (digital artist and composer), & Leslie Hughes (textile artist).

Sometimes an encounter with certain artworks, music, or images of others can open a door and trigger a procession of images, associations, and reveries. This installation is a collection of work that reflects such encounters. Digital poetry videos, music, and textiles that are made in response to poems. will be installed. 

The audience will be invited to participate by way of postcards (bring your own or pick one up at the event) to write or draw an image, association, or reverie triggered by another's piece of art.

Link to web page with poetry videos, visual art, and audio exhibited at the Nordic Center:   https://www.sheilapacka.com/3rivers/index.html

Sheila Packa is a fiscal year 2022 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota thanks to a legislative appropriation from the MSAB arts and cultural heritage fund. This event also has been made possible by past grants from the Finlandia Foundation National and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.

For the preservation of wilderness and among many searching for home, this poet travels through mining excavations and waterways vulnerable to environmental contamination and climate change in Minnesota, where the Northern Continental Divide crosses the Laurentian Divide and creates three watersheds that flow into the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, and Hudson Bay. These images capture the beauty of the north, and these stories, historical and contemporary, honor the resilience of people who arrive or are displaced, whose language is replaced by another language, and who find a fluid space full of risk and possibility.