Art, Readings, & Reactions with Quiet Lightning and Modern Eden

Join ArtSpan and Quiet Lightning at Modern Eden Gallery for the fourth annual Art, Readings, & Reactions event!

ART: Curated by Modern Eden
READINGS: Curated by Quiet Lighning
REACTIONS: Empowered by ArtSpan

This Artist Mixer showcases writers from Quiet Lightning as they share literary creations inspired by the artwork at Modern Eden. The audience will be equiped with sketch books and drawing materials from ArtSpan to react with drawings.

PLUS MUSIC: A performance by Turk & Divis (Evan and Miles Karp), who on June 12 launch the Quiet Lightning album: featuring 50 Bay Area writers performing live at last year’s QL shows, a rough version of each track was scored and released each month last year. Now mixed, mastered, and cut to vinyl, the album is a mixtape of mixtapes. For music, visuals, and pre-orders: turkanddivis.com.

Don’t forget snacks, beverages, and mingling with fellow artists!

ON DISAPLY ART MODERN EDEN GALLERY:

Baby Mama: Portrait Invitational VI, June 8–July 6, 2018

Modern Eden Gallery proudly presents the 6th edition of our portrait show. Baby Mama, is inspired by medieval and renaissance religious depictions of the Madonna and Child. A hand-selected lineup of top contemporary figurative artists will bring this archetype into a modern context, using present-day imagery and iconography to put a new twist on the classical icon, and interpreting Madonna and Child through the modern lens.

QUIET LIGHTNING READERS/WRITERS:
> for author links: http://quietlightning.org/baby-mama/

Linda Norton: Linda is the author of a chapbook, Hesitation Kit (EtherDome, 2007) and The Public Gardens: Poems and History (Pressed Wafer, 2011; introduction by Fanny Howe), a hybrid work of poetry and non-fiction and a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her second book, Wite-Out (Love and Work), is scheduled for 2018-2019 publication. In 2014 Norton received a Creative Work Fund award and a Dickey Fellowship at SF State. She is also a visual artist. Her collages have appeared on the covers of books by Claudia Rankine, Julie Carr, and other poets, and have been exhibited at the Dock Arts Centre in Ireland.

Thea Matthews: Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Thea Matthews is a queer Black and Mexican American awarded poet, spoken word artist, activist, curator, bruja, revolutionary, collaborator, and researcher. She writes on the complexities of trauma, grief, resiliency, and ultimately, the triumph over trauma. Her work can be found in For Harriet’s Soar, Rag Queen Periodical, as well as SoundCloud, YouTube, and Ello. As a seasoned performer, Thea frequents the San Francisco Bay Area literary scene; and has featured at literary festivals such as Beast Crawl Oakland, Lit Crawl San Francisco; and reading series such as Paseo Artístico, Lyrics & Dirges, Nomadic Press’s First Fridays and Get Lit, as well as performances hosted by Still Here San Francisco. Currently, Thea is working on her first volume of poetry–– a thematic collection incorporating flower medicine and city life. She will be at the Berkeley Poetry Festival this upcoming September.

Carla Trujillo: Carla is the editor of two anthologies published by Third Woman Press, Living Chicana Theory and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, winner of a Lambda Book Award & the Out/Write Vanguard Award. Her novel, What Night Brings (Curbstone Press 2003), won the Marmol prize focusing on human rights, along with the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Literary Foundation Book Award, Bronze Medal from Foreword Magazine, Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Meyers Books Award, and was a LAMBDA Book Award finalist. Her latest novel, Faith and Fat Chances (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press 2015), was a finalist for the PEN-Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

Christine No: is a first-generation Korean American writer and filmmaker. She believes in the power of Radical Vulnerability and that Magic exists in all strange places. Christine is an advocate for ridding the stigma surrounding mental health; and creating education and dialogue in its place. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two-time Pushcart Prize nominee [2015 & 2017] and Best of the Net 2017 nominee. Her work can be found in The Rumpus, sPARKLE+bLINK, Columbia Journal, Story Online, Apogee, Atlas and Alice, Vagabond Lit, The Brooklyn Quarterly, and various anthologies. She is a cohort of the Winter Tangerine Workshop, the Kearny Street Workshop Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab, and sits on the board of Quiet Lightning, a literary non-profit based in San Francisco. Christine is an Assistant Features Editor at The Rumpus.

Natasha Dennerstein: Natasha was born in Melbourne, Australia, to a family originating in Belarus. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for many years, which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Natasha has had poetry published in many journals including Landfall, Shenandoah, Bloom, Red Light Lit, Spoon River Poetry Review, Foglifter and North American Review. Her collections Anatomize (2015), Triptych Caliform (2016) and her novella-in-verse About a Girl (2017) were published by Norfolk Press in San Francisco. Her chapbook Seahorse (2017) was published by Nomadic Press in Oakland.

Kim Shuck: Kim is the current Poet Laureate of San Francisco; her books include the poetry collections Smuggling Cherokee and Sidewalk NDN and the book of poetic fiction Rabbit Stories; her heritage is Tsulagi, Sauk, Fox, and Polish. She is the first Native American poet laureate of a major American city.

With a musical performance by Turk & Divis (Evan and Miles Karp), who on June 12 and June 16 launch the Quiet Lightning album: featuring 50 Bay Area writers performing live at last year’s QL shows, a rough version of each track was scored and released each month last year. Now mixed, mastered, and cut to vinyl, the album — their second — is a mixtape of mixtapes.

————————–—-

About Modern Eden Gallery: Modern Eden is located in San Francisco’s historic North Beach Neighborhood since June of 2010. The gallery features monthly exhibitions of established and emerging artists. The gallery’s contemporary aesthetic ranges from realism to surrealism with a strong focus on illustrative painting and representational sculpture.

About Quiet Lightning: A literary nonprofit based in San Francisco, QL created the literary mixtape and since December 2009 has produced 120 events featuring 1200 readings by 800 authors in 80 venues, from dive bars and art galleries to state parks and national landmarks.

About ArtSpan Artist Mixers: ArtSpan produces Artist Mixer events throughout the year to give San Francisco artists a chance to meet, mingle, and make art with each other. Past events have included mixers at artist studios, a Crochet Jam at a cafe, a literary reading and sketchfest at a gallery, a figure drawing session in the Dogpatch, and much much more! All events are free and open to the public.