CONTEXT II

AUGUST 4 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

OPENING RECEPTION:

Friday, August 4, 5:30 - 8:00pm | FREE

AWARDS

[1] "Going Solo " Exhibition or $500

[2] $200 Juror's Choice Awards

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE MISSOURI ARTS COUNCIL, A STATE AGENCY

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE MISSOURI ARTS COUNCIL, A STATE AGENCY

 

THE EXHIBITION

For the second year, the Foundry Art Centre presents an all-media exhibition focusing on the written word’s role in the visual arts. The language of literature can be used in visual pieces literally, symbolically, texturally, referentially, and in many other ways. Context II will once again speak to the intersection between visual and written arts. This exhibition will coincide with our Arts & Literary Festival (held in conjunction with the St. Charles City County Library System) and our “Language” themed  evening of Second Thursdays: Living Art, an evening of free art activities, education, entertainment, and refreshment for the community.

juror

Jason Vasser

Jason N.Vasser is a poet, essayist, and lover of the performing arts that was born and raised in Saint Louis but has roots in Cameroon, Central Africa. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL) after studying anthropology and publishing his ethnographic thesis Rhyme and Reason: Poetics as Societal Dialogue. His poetry has appeared in many local publications and currently has an essay “Treading the Atlantic” in the special edition of the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies – Netherlandic Migrations: Narratives from North America and a poem, “If/Then” in Black Lives Have Always Mattered, edited by Abiodun Oyewole and published by 2Leaf Press in New York.

Over the years Jason has appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch in an article written by Jane Henderson titled “Poetry can be an early form of artistic response to trauma”, in response to issues in Ferguson, Missouri, has donated time and talent throughout the St. Louis area programming, performing, and using poetry as a form of outreach, for programs such as Outside In: Paint For Peace, One Hundred Thousand Poets and Musicians for Change, and others. He is active in the community as a Community Arts Training fellow, board member of the Saint Louis Poetry Center, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. and in other organizations. Later this spring, Jason will be featured in a documentary “Never Been a Time”, produced and directed by Denise Ward of Washington University and internationally in “The Art and Culture of Cameroon”, written, produced and directed by Daniel Anagho, and is currently editing Ethical values of Bamileke traditions, written by Chief Ouabo Gouamou (Wabo Gooamo) of Cameroon. When not writing at Meshuggah Café in U-City, Jason is a program specialist in community arts at the Missouri Arts Council, where is proud to help support Missouri arts based organizations.

JUROR'S STATEMENT

Ekphrasis

How Comfort Comes

to Imply and Infer

a beauty mask that conceals,

 

there is writing on the Invisible Walls

warning us to not go gently,

 

there is silence in those noisy rooms

tucked away in colors

are fists full of paint brushes

emulating the Jesus in King

or the Mary in Queen Jane –

Sacred poems etched in our collecting memory.

 

America Never Was

what it is today, right now

let us open our mouths,

see The Courage to Change

so that true love will not be lost to the waves

 

but remain engraved

painted     on our Urban Canvass’s

are the calligraphy,

the writings of our lives captured

on the spray painted bricks

that are the ruins of torn down walls

 

The One She Likes is Dancing with the Feral

a Willow or canary

 a Story Teller in the song

of life as rhymed in a poem

 

That The night Will Come Again and the story of our lives

will be neatly stacked on the walls

 

Freedom of Expression our Mother Tongue

running loosely on the canvass is Love.