FREE. Pre-registration required.
Poetry, Printmaking, Painting, and Film blend together for this year's Word.Art show.
Close Apart is a series of collaborative multimedia pieces by poet Beatrix Gates and printmaker Tim Seabrook, with help from painter Leslie Cummins. In order to bring these pieces and the process of their creation to life for the Word Festival virtually, a short film on the subject was commissioned from filmmaker Matt Shaw, with support from the Anahata Foundation.
We invite you to join us in kicking off this year's festival with a screening of the film followed by a conversation with the artists.
Beatrix Gates has been writing and publishing for over 45 years, and her six poetry collections include Dos and Lambda Poetry Award finalist, In the Open. Her translations of Jesús Aguado’s poems and her poetry appear in bateau, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review and Tupelo Quarterly. Gates’ hybrid work appears in Jane Cooper: A Radiance of Attention (Michigan) and “For Orlando: Make Beautiful in Maine” in Scotland’s MAP. A long-time member of Goddard’s MFA faculty, she has taught literature and writing for over thirty years in many settings, including Colby College, NYU, CCNY, libraries in Maine and NYC and Maine Maritime Academy. She serves on the Board of The Cannery at South Penobscot and founded SIDELINES/ In Translation Series. She grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts with roots in Hancock, Maine and lives in Brooksville, Maine.
Tim Seabrook has been working in fine art intaglio printmaking for 45 years. His early exhibits began with Images 69 at Ohio’s Baldwin-Wallace College followed by The Biennial at The Cincinnati Art Museum and juried exhibits at The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Seabrook won the George Sherman Medal Award from the Society of American Graphic Artists in New York City. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Fairfield Hall in London; Cape Split Place in Addison, Maine; and his work has been in juried shows at Maine Coast Artists in Rockport and the Barrett Art Center National Printmaking Exhibition in Poughkeepsie, NY. Seabrook was selected for “Maine Printmakers 1980-2006,” curated by Bruce Brown, and the Maine Arts Commission’s “Maine Printmakers 1980-2006,” curated by Donna McNeil. In Maine, he has exhibited at The Leighton Gallery, The Turtle Gallery and The Laughing Lion Gallery. Seabrook’s drawing and printmaking have stayed with him as a dedicated focus next to the long-term work of farming and creating 5 Star Nursery and Orchard with Leslie Cummins.
Matt Shaw's filmmaking is centered in a process of looking and listening. Through an interest in histories of place that recognize the relationship between humans and other species, his work engages research, conversation, and observation to read the landscape as archive.
He received his BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and his MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His films have been supported by LEF Foundation, Maine Arts Commission, Arteles Creative Center, and a Flaherty Film Seminar Fellowship. He is an Adjunct Faculty at College of the Atlantic and a bookseller at Blue Hill Books. After growing up in Poughkeepsie, New York he now lives on the coast of Maine.
Leslie Cummins, an accomplished painter who has exhibited at Colby College and the University of Maine at Orono, has added her own color thought through the deft and sensitive touch of chromologist to CLOSE APART=Beatrix Gates, poetry, and Tim Seabrook, etchings. Cummins attended the Art Students League, Boston Museum School, Montreal Museum School and Syracuse Art School. She helped found The Laughing Lion Gallery at Rowantrees Pottery in 1977. Cummins’ drawings and paintings have stayed with her as a dedicated focus next to the long-term work of farming and creating 5 Star Nursery and Orchard with Tim Seabrook.
