Volume 3, Issue 15
July 19 - August 1, 2001

ARTS

Writing Through the Fog

There is Support for Your Inner Writer

CHARACTERS

Andrea: Well mannered woman, slight of build. Attractive, scholarly, intuitive, serene.
Michael: Tallish, slim, slightly haunted as only a poet can be. Eloquent, engaging, yet sincere.
Alexandre: Looks like a kid off a Gap commercial, only older. Current, artistic, chic, intense.
Anonymous speakers, audience members, students

SCENE

The Tattered Cover Bookstore, Lower Downtown Denver. It is a Saturday afternoon. About 40 people have gathered for a free seminar on writing. Hipsters in denim and an old man in a baseball cap (who looks like Santa in plaid) sit in adjacent rows. An anonymous tall man stands at the back of the room. A conversation is going on between the audience and the speakers. Questions and answers bounce anonymously between the speakers and the audience, whispering along the walls like timeless echoes.

"Do we get cliché, does fashion change?"

"It's a question of trusting your gut."

"Is there artistic value in the first person confessional poem?"

"You bring it to workshop and everyone trashes it...."

"We're built to create; that's just a part of our nature."

Strong sunlight glances off the light brick post office across the street and breaks into the room through a side doorway. The conversation angles toward demo-graphics, then turns back toward art, soul and creativity. The presentation is over, the handouts have long been delivered and the audience is enthused and grateful as they depart.

Andrea, my contact for the story, proves difficult to track down. First I approach a woman with a name tag, but she, as it turns out, works for the bookstore. She points out Andrea, who is engaged in a conversation with one of her students.

She is gently encouraging and attentive. The student says a warm goodbye as I finish gathering my notes and introduce myself.

Later: a short fiction class is held in a downtown loft filled with books and his-and-her computers that face opposite walls. Comfortable couches link with chairs to form a circle in which a small group of writers is seated. A tenable energy lifts off words being read aloud-- a short story to be workshopped. Different pieces of the story seem to drift from the words and take root just behind the eyes of each of the writers.

Outside the second story window, the Greyhound bus station makes murmurs of journeys with every rumbling departure. It is a call everyone in the room seems to have answered in some interior way. The reader finishes the story. Raindrops line up on the window like courtroom observers taking their seats for the reading of the verdict.

The story is critiqued. Honestly, yet humanely. For the most part, egos seem to have been left at the door-- even the writer's. The details of the story are discussed in depth, both those that work and those that don't. In the end, everyone looks happy-- even the writer.

The Lighthouse Writers Workshop was founded in 1997. The 'facilitators' are all university-level instructors, some of whom teach writing at University of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver. Screenwriting, short story, poetry, novel writing, creative nonfiction and grant writing are but some of the workshops offered by the group. They also offer a small assortment of online courses. Sessions range from half-days running around $60 to full eight-week workshops for $215. The group also offers free public seminars regularly.

Eight-week workshops meet for two hours weekly, but have access to the instructor and the rest of the group via e-mail and phone. Weekly creative assignments help to activate ideas and keep the students focused on their goals. Under the guidance of the facilitator, the community of writers works together to help each other achieve its individual writing goals. Not bad for an average cost of less than $30 per week.

Outside the loft window at 20th and Arapahoe, disappointed raindrops roll slowly down the glass. No verdict to be heard from jurors on the couch, only suggestions and opinions. Inside, rows of books argue silently, voiceless even for all their words. Outside, families say goodbye to departing loved ones boarding the Greyhound bus. Inside, the final class is discussed. A thin wisp of melancholy snakes through the air-- until someone brings up the next session.

If writing is anywhere close to your thing, you too might find a new journey waiting for you at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. The next eight-week session starts August 6. For information contact 303-297-1185, or visit www.lighthousewriters.com

--Cilicia Yakhlef

photo by sean hartgrove

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

Jennifer Thompson finds success as a young painter

Success seems to be hovering close behind her, ready to strike at any time. Although Jennifer Thompson has only been painting since 1997, and graduated from the University of Colorado at Denver last year, she already has a string of solo and group shows to her cred-it, including a piece in the current Carson-Masuoka Gallery exhibition, Past Present.

"It seems like I've been doing it my entire life," she said. "I had my first show in 1997 and sold two paintings in about 15 minutes of hanging the show. It was a really cool feeling." When Thompson first attended the Community College of Denver, where she received an Associates of Arts degree, she had no plans to pursue art. "I was lost like everyone else, trying to figure out what I wanted to do," she said. "I know I wanted to be a rock star and I still do. I just had a birthday, and I was depressed because I realized I'm getting too old to be one."

Thompson incorporates figures, symbols, shapes and words with abstract elements to create layers of captivat-ing interest. Thompson combines her influences, which include William De Kooning, Jean-Michel Basquiat, J. M. W. Turner and Robert Rauschenberg, into a unique visual language.

"I also have a strong interest in art from the '50s and contemporary painters," she said. "However, I'm not limited to these influences. I view myself as an art history addict, and the entire realm of art plays a role in influencing my work." Her addiction to art led to a trip to Italy and New York City to study first hand other artists. "I'm kind of taking a little bit of a break and sifting through all this information I got," she said. "I feel I need to travel more."

"Each painting addresses current events, capturing a historical moment," she continued. "Between the time I graduated and now, I've been reading a lot, and you can't help getting pissed off about what's going on right now with politics. I feel like I need to say something. I think I think too much sometimes."

Thompson will be continuing her art studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she is a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts.

"I always kind of joked about when I graduated, I was going to be a famous painter, but now I've graduated. I would like to set little goals. Make enough money to stay afloat and get some exposure. You've got to work very hard at it. You have to be a publicity whore."

"I think the longer I do this the more I'm going to learn," she said. "I've already outgrown the painting in the gallery. I don't ever want to get comfortable." --Sean Weaver

HAUTE HUE, COOL COLOR
@
THE COLORISTS

Fresh Art Gallery
208 S. Broadway, Denver,
through July 28

The first glimpse of Mark Brasuell's new work was the visual equivalent of a splash in the face, a cold gulp of water. Juxtapositioned blues-- ultramarine, cobalt, turquoise-- liquefy a portion of each painting. Dive on in. Brasuell isn't portraying water. I don't know that he's portraying anything. These are abstract paintings. But between the aquatic blues and their counterpoint-colors-- rich reds, ochres, leafy greens with a slight metallic glisten-- landscapes are evoked. These works are reminiscent of Monet's monumental waterlily paintings, although the resemblance is as much emotional as visual. The eye "reads in" plant-life, overhanging or wreathing water. This palette's intense, Monet's was muted, but there's a similarly baffling sense of depth-- do we see the water's surface, or peer down through it? Layers of paint, layers of intention and meaning.

Word-play titles like "Luxuriate and moody" and "Full bodied correspondence" add to the layering without shedding much light, but that's fine. That scribble of red alongside the cobalt: water-side shrubbery, or calligraphy? Brasuell says much of this brushwork is writing, but it reads subliminally, like a visual whisper, as we gradually notice the line quality, the looping scrawl. Any words are embedded deeply, a secret language.

Brasuell has worked in wildly various media and styles, from rude sculptures with Barbie dolls to an on-going computer-generated collaboration with Dania Pettus. Given his stylistic diversity during the years, these paintings seem to leap out of nowhere, fully realized, with nary a misstep or awkward passage in sight. I doubt it's that easy. Artists strive for years to paint this well, and the viewer generally gets to see at least some of the tortured stumbles in the learning process.

Brasuell did his painting pratfalls elsewhere. What we see is a body of work both mature and exuberant. These bright, intelligent paintings are the heart of the show.

They're also a tough act to follow. Lorey Hobbs holds her own with large canvases, a sure hand and lots of texture via heavily slathered-on impasto. Less happily, Hobb's work reads biologically, with big amorphous shapes like

organs or pods, and plenty of smaller egg-shapes. Vein-like currents of color weave through the paintings like pulsating extension cords. As well as Hobbs paints, especially in the very adept "Continuation" and "Generations," the visceral shapings are pretty digestive for this viewer.

From Hobbs' abstracted organics to Yasmin Terry's amoebas. This style of painting seems damn near contagious during the last decade or so: ovals of color, some as outline-ovals, some as filled-in-solid ovals, some vertical, some horizontal, some overlapping, some not, all painted with a casual hand, as if the brush is barely under control. Any personal strengths here, such as the textural interest provided by graphite and collage elements, are offset by Terry's thankless palette. If you like Philip Guston's sense of color-- pale reds fading to dull ketchup-mayonaise pinks, and cool yellows mutating to light yellowed grays-- well, enjoy. Terry's actually got a decent hand but needs something to say, an expanded color range and way, way less of the derivative shape-play.

Literally rounding out the show are terra cotta "Stones" from Judith Cohn. Head-sized and bigger, these look like primordial bowling balls, spherical but never true round, dabbed with glazed, incised with lines. Cohn contributes several fine standing pieces as well, nearly human-height. "Concave" and "Convex" are both particularly pleasing, with plenty of their brown-orange clay still showing amid streaks of glaze.

Abstraction is tricky. By being subjectless, it's open to each viewer's own subjective baggage: Rorschach-ville. For presenting a full show of it anyway, kudos to Fresh Art. --Renna Shesso