Twin Ports Art: Things to See and Do in July

Ink on 1939 London Times. Signed. 

These are certainly strange times. I'm referring here to the ongoing lockdown, which brings to mind the little button fans of The Truman Show were wearing: When Will It End. (It may have been How Will It End.) The film with Jim Carrey as Truman has been a personal favorite for the psychological and philosophical issues it raises. It stands alongside Groundhog Day as an example of a creative entertaining way of having us think more deeply about the meaning of our lives.

All that being said, the urge to make art seems pretty innate in a lot of us. Therefore, there's still plenty of creative expression taking place here. Thanks to Esther Piszczek, you can find a lot of it at the Twin Ports Art Blog that she maintains. You will find the list of July activities here:
https://twinportsart.blogspot.com/2020/06/happy-july-everyone-fresh-vegetables.html

Item of note: There will be what's billed as an Arts Industry Social Hour next Tuesday. Local Artists Moira Villiard, Adam Swanson, Ryan Tischer, and Amanda Hunter will be co-hosting a panel discussion on the impact of current events on the local arts community and businesses. This will be the first of several such virtual events this summer. Login details at Twin Ports Art.

EdNote: If you are not a regular Zoomer, it's a good protocol to log in early and then mute yourself so that background noises and interruptions are kept to a minimum.

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On a semi-related note, here's a Jay Leeming poem that was shared on Garrison Keillor's The Writers Almanac in 2006. I discovered it through Phil Fitzpatrick's March Madness-style bracketed poetry competition. Each week he paired off four sets of poems and we (the participants) would select the winner for each pairing. At this point we've narrowed the field but still have a ways to go. It's been a tremendously fun experience, stimulating more poems than usual from my own pen.

Here's the beginning of this poem, with a link to the rest, after which I share a link to one of my own.

Man Writes Poem
This just in a man has begun writing a poem
in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains
are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now
to our man Harry on the scene, what's

the story down there Harry? "Well Chuck
he has begun the second stanza and seems
to be doing fine, he's using a blue pen, most
poets these days use blue or black ink so blue

is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing
in a breeze of some kind and what's more his radiator
is 'whistling' somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet,
but I'm sure he's rummaging around down there
(You can read the rest here.)

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And finally, a link to one of my own: Cancel Culture.

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Whether you write, paint or make music, don't bind your creative spirit to a post in the basement. Give it wings and let it soar.