Join us for our 4th bi-monthly-ish Artist Salon dreamed up and organized by a working group that formed at the June 2025 symposium “Town Meeting 1978-2028”.
Dinner Provided
Free (as always)
The following note is from francine j harris, one of the members of the working group:
“Hey Folks,
As part of the Town Meeting 2028 preparation and community building, we would like to start organizing bimonthly artist salons. As a poet, such evenings hold a special place in my heart, as they have been the source of much artistic intimacy over the years among my peers, colleagues and friends in the various places I've lived. It is a source of inspiration and accountability and a way to stay tuned in to the processes and production of your artistic peers, not just the end product of readings, shows and exhibits, but in the actual throws.
Essentially, the artist's salon is a small, hosted gathering where attendees share a brief sample of their current work or production. It's not a crit session or a workshop, though you are welcome to invite discussion if that feels right for you. Your share might be an excerpt of a poem or essay and talking about the research or sharing photographs of a current studio project and discussing some of the strides and challenges. It might be an unrelated audio experiment or a film clip. It's really sort of open for interpretation, but is meant to be inspiring and insightful into your current practice and the excitements that keep you working. Ideally, the presentation should be brief - say 10 minutes or so and you might invite discussion/question or simply choose to share and move on to the next artist. These salons were made famous by Gertrude Stein and the artists and writers in her Parisian circle like Picasso, Hemingway, Braque and Matisse. The idea then was that they might be 'educational,' but of course they took on all sorts of lives of their own.