Women's Art Exhibit and Writer Series

Carlotta’s Passion Fine Art is pleased to present Le Deuxième Sexe?, an all-women artist exhibit from September 9th – September 24th. You are cordially invited to attend the artist’s reception on Saturday, September 9th, from 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm. The exhibit includes works by Diane Gamboa, Margaret Garcia, Linda Arreola, Olivia Sanchez Brown, Mari Cardenas, Judith Duran, Simone Gad, CiCi Gonzalez, Fei Lu, Poli Marichal, Isabel Martinez, Lucia Maya, and Audri Phillips, each a visual powerhouse in her own right. The artwork is as diverse as the worlds of the artists are unique. Gad and Gamboa share bold personal expressions with strong touches of pattern and design. Garcia graciously defines herself and her community while Gonzalez presents both narrative figuration and gravity-free abstraction. Arreola combines social commentary with spiritual awareness. The potent works of Marichal and Lu also address vital issues of the day. Both are influenced by their families. Marichal’s father having been a Spanish Civil refugee and Puerto Rico's most famous theatrical scene designer and Lu’s grandfather a famous Chinese propaganda artist during the reign of Mao Zedong. Maya is a brilliant Mexican lithographer whose work is heavily influenced by dream structuring. Similarly, Phillips produces dreamscape-like oeuvres "where the outer continues into the inner, the visible into the invisible”. Women's Writer Series Carlotta's Passion Fine Art is offering a series of readings by highly gifted women writers and poets, many of whom have been rewarded with very positive critical acclaim. Reading Schedule Sunday, September 10th, 3:00 pm: Charlotte Innes, Kim Grant, and Cora Moncrief Friday, September 15th, 8:00 pm: Yvette Johnson, Liz Gonzalez, and Mona Jean Cedar Sunday, September 17th, 3:00 pm: Pat Alderete, Consuelo Flores, Reina Prado, and Maria Elena Gaitan Friday, September 22th, 8:00 pm: Bridget Kelley-Lossada, Judith Terzi, and Chella Courington Sunday, September 24th: 3:00 pm: Kathleen Tyler, Marte Broehm, and Lucinda Michele Knapp About the Writers and Poets Pat Alderete Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Pat Alderete writes about the beauty and brutality of barrio life, rendering the complex inner worlds and strict social hierarchies of a community too seldom observed in literature. Her short stories are published in Joteria and PEN Center Journal, and have been anthologized in Hers 2 and 3; Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Latino Arts Anthology 1988-2000; and A Geography of Rage. She has written two one-act plays, Ghost and the Spirit, produced as a staged reading in 1997, and Love and Fire, produced as a staged reading by the Macha Theater in 2003; her one- woman performance, Tina Gets Married, was produced in 1999. Alderete is currently at work on a book of short fiction about Chicana/o life in East L.A. Alderete has studied writing with Sandra Cisneros, Luis J. Rodriguez, Helena Maria Viramontes, Mona Simpson, and Terry Wolverton. In 1996, she was part of the first group of writers to participate in the PEN Center USA West "Emerging Voices" Program. An accomplished performer, Ms. Alderete has delighted audiences throughout Southern California, most recently at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Alderete has twice been a guest artist at the University of Nebraska/Lincoln, where she lectured and read her work. Marte Broehm Ms. Broehm's California roots go back 33 years. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she has typical Midwestern values streaked with some West Coast sunshine. (She thanks God for that!) Following her 30-year career as a professional educator and consultant, Marte has turned to other talents of: writing, painting, and editing. She's taken part in readings and been a featured poet at numerous locations throughout Southern California. Her poems have appeared in more than ten anthologies in addition to several ezine sites. A large selection of Marte Broehm's work will be forthcoming in QUINTET, with Ishmael Reed, Jack Marshall, Sam Hamod and Steve Kowit, due out in late 2006. A first solo publication, To Breathe You In (tentative title), is planned for early 2007.Ms. Broehm says, "I have always wanted to write, began writing before being a teen, yet everything else came first... Until now. I have been seriously marked, filled, and influenced by Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Gerald Stern, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, and by life: everything right/ everything wrong. My three mentors, Cecilia Woloch, Sam Hamod, and Harry Griswold, as well as my beloved community of poets and writers, have each pressed new breath into me. I love the sounds of words, the work of the mind within a poem; I love the fact that each of us brings our own experience to a poem and however we read it, it's right. Reviewer Comments Fellow poets critiquing Marte Broehm comment that her poems are "musical"; "shocking"; "provide strong images that reveal time and place"; "poems that are tersely and sparsely powerful and rich". Additional recognition has been given to Marte for editing her first book, designing the book, as well as its cover: a watercolor painting by Marte. She is also recipient of an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Mona Jean Cedar A lover of languages, the dancer, Mona Jean Cedar, composes and choreographs poetry in spoken word with the world's sign languages, adds her husband's original music and creates multi-communicative works of art. Born in New York, migrated to Los Angeles, to academically achieve an AA in Dance, an AS in Sign Language Interpreting, and from CSUN a BS in Deaf Studies with a focus in performance. Other pertinent education occurred at the Julliard School in New York City for theatrical interpreting and the National Theater of the Deaf. Her most fulfilling spiritual experiences are as a performance artist at many Burning Man festivals and as a participant in the National Poetry Slam Finals, both as poet and interpreter. Ms. Cedar can literally be described as "poetry in motion". Chella Courington Born and raised at the tip of the Appalachian Mountains in northern Alabama, Chella Courington grew up in a family of storytellers. Seduced by the written word, she pursued a Doctorate in Literature at the University of South Carolina and studied with James Dickey. In 2002, she moved to California and returned to writing poetry. Now teaching at Santa Barbara City College, she has published poetry in over twenty journals including Spillway, Carquinez Poetry Review, Permafrost, Poemeleon, Iris, and King Log. Her first chapbook, published by Foothills Publishing of New York in November 2004, is entitled Southern Girl Gone Wrong. Ms. Courington says, "Much of my poetry is woman-centered and largely influenced by artists like Lucille Clifton, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Denise Chavez, and Dorothy Allison. Other influences include my best friend's mother, an unconventional thinker in the rural South who taught me that reading was key to a fuller life, and a colleague in graduate school who showed me that the love for women awakens us to our potential as artists and intellectuals. As a result, I write from the body with a desire to know where I am physically and spiritually, creating a voice and place often ignored by others." Reviewer Comments "No one writes of sexuality more sweetly or bitterly, when taken by even the most holy, than Chella Courington. Her poems sizzle under southern sun and make you want to go take a cold shower. Her talk is tough, sensual, sparse yet laced with lyricism and love for the family, in the end, and all things southern that come from staring truth in the face. Startling images are there not for effect, but rise out of suffering, and like her, we are "saved" by memory's exquisite touch." - Perie Longo, Author of The Privacy of Wind "Courington' s poetry is infused with magic, and to enter her language is to wade slowly through water, where a Southern Gothic world is re-created and re-imagined, and defiant Southern girls openly celebrate their sexuality until one by one they become known as a "Southern Girl Gone Wrong." - Lisa Williams, Author of Letters to Virginia Woolf and The Artist as Outsider on the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf Consuelo Flores Consuelo Flores is a Creative Non-Fiction MFA student at Antioch University, Los Angeles where she was awarded the Diversity and Eloise Klein Healy Scholarships, given to a student that shows the most promise. She has read at Self Help Graphics, the Armory Center for the Arts, Beyond Baroque, The Autry Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum and several colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Ms. Flores presents her work in a unique personal performance style, poetic illustrations of life that reflect family and culture mixed with social perspective. She prolifically writes "Day of the Dead" themed work, remembrances and celebrations of life, literary altars she builds as offerings to her dead. Maria Elena Gaitan María Elena Gaitán is an interdisciplinary artist who utilizes her extraordinary musical and oratorical skills to examine cross- cultural, race, gender, and class issues, as they affect Latinos in the United States. Gaitán has been on tour from Los Angeles to Lisbon for over 10 years with shows that are often presented to standing room only audiences. Ms. Gaitan is perhaps best known for The Adventures of Connie Chancla, a satirical performance on the State of Affairs in Pocholandia, the ancestral lands of the Pocho people. The state of the taco, the politico and the maniaco will be reflected upon as Connie Chancla takes the audience through a wild counter-narrative of 150+ years of borders, barriers and stereotypes through multilingual humor, pre-hispanic codices, sculpture, paintings, photography, video... and a little cello music to soothe the soul. Liz Gonzalez Liz González grew up 60 miles east of Los Angeles in Rialto, California. In 1999, she earned an MFA in English and Creative Writing through Mills College in Oakland, California. She was the 1999/2000 Writer in Residence at the Phoenix College Creative Writing Program in Phoenix, Arizona. Currently, liz lives in Long Beach, California, and is working on a novel which will contain poetry. Liz's poetry, fiction, and memoirs continue to appear in journals and periodicals such as Cooweescoowe, Caguama, Plum Ruby Review, The November 3rd Club, Heliotrope, Comet, Luna, Brújula, Compass, Cider Press Review, Spillway, The San Francisco Chronicle, and New Delta Review, and in the anthologies Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles, Open Windows: An anthology of five Poetry in the Windows Projects, So Luminous the Wildflowers: An Anthology of California Poets, and Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, among others. She is the author of the limited edtion chapbook Beneath Bone, published by Manifest Press. Her recent awards include the Arts Council for Long Beach's 2005 Professional Artist Fellowship, a fiction-writing grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation and a residency at Hedgebrook: A Retreat for Women Writers. Kim Grant Kim Grant is the product of a bipolar mother who wrote hundreds of unpublished poems and a father who drove a truck and worshipped Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers. Ms. Grant began her illustrious writing career at the age of six with a poem about flowers that was published in the weekly newsletter of the Terre Haute, Indiana Federal Prison. The inmates loved it. With that encouragement she has continued writing and producing plays, having her short stories published in small press and creating poems which have been described as "notes by someone peeping through a broken, dirty window into a stranger's house." She was born in Springfield, Illinois and likes to point out that people in the Midwest can hold their liquor better than their L.A. counterparts but notes that said liquor consumption may affect their judgment when it comes to attractive attire. Ms. Grant is a Glassell Park Scorpio bon vivant, who buys drinks for her friends, throws impromptu dinner parties regularly and books bands for an alt-country concert series called, "The Grand Ole Echo" in Echo Park. You would want to meet her. Yes. You would. Charlotte Innes Charlotte Innes writes about books and the arts for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Her poetry has appeared in The Hudson Review, Ekphrasis, Speechless Magazine, and will next appear in The Eleventh Muse. She has taught journalism at the University of Southern California and Columbia University, New York. Currently, she teaches journalism and creative writing at Brentwood School, Los Angeles. Her awards include a first prize in the Poetry in the Windows V contest (2003) in Los Angeles. She also has interviewed many writers and cultural icons, including Oprah Winfrey and Tony Morrison. Her Nation essays on writers Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, and Yann Martel are anthologized in Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vols. 64, 110, 169, 192). Of her poetry, Ms. Innes says, "I recently wrote in Speechless the Magazine that, perhaps because I came late to poetry after a long career in journalism, I sometimes feel, like the poet Mark Strand, that "Ink runs from the corners of my mouth/There is no happiness like mine./I have been eating poetry." Poetry as necessary as eating or breathing. Poetry as joy. And poetry as "joy in the bookish dark," as Strand puts it. When I was a child I was always reading. But I also wanted to be an Antarctic explorer. And there's a sense in which poetry has taken me to that exciting, icy place-a place where I keep pushing on, ecstatically, through disturbing blizzards in search of something I know is right, but I'm not always quite sure what it is. Which writers shaped me? Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot, Rilke, and the French Surrealists, for sure-and many others whose music probably worked its way in while I wasn't paying attention, perhaps Wordsworth, whom I read at school, perhaps John Clare, Fernando Pessoa, John Ashbery, and Elizabeth Bishop." Reviewer Comments "Charlotte Innes is already a brilliant poet, one whose work excites me on both a linguistic and a personal level. I compare her to such mid-Atlantic poets as Sylvia Plath and Anne Stevenson for her angular and precise language, brainy lyricism and intensity of feeling. … editors are beginning to take note." -David Mason, author of Arrivals, The Country I Remember, and The Buried Houses. "In Charlotte Innes' newest, and best, poems-the deeply satisfying "More Moon than Moon" series - she has arrived upon a language both strikingly clear and suffused in mystery, frank in tone yet dreamlike in its shimmering apparitions and witty, unexpected connections. Warning: the moon poems can be addictive. I defy anyone to stop after just one." - Suzanne Lummis, present and founding Director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and author of In Danger. Yvette Johnson Yvette Johnson studied Creative Wriiting, Theater and Dance at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She has written her first two chapbooks this year, which are entitled Poem and Other Poems and Bluffs. She is currently reading case sensitive by Kate Greenstreet and Queen of Bohemia by Philomene Long. Bridget Kelley-Lossada Bridget Kelley-Lossada is a Los Angeles poet/writer who received her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Inkwell, 51%, Moondance, Invisible Plane, A Pagan's Muse, and Lounge Lit. Reviewer Comment "Bridget Kelley-Lossada' s poems are quirky, playful, and dead serious -- never superficial, never facile, and never, ever predictable. I've used the poems in her chapbook, The Recipes Are in Here, as models in the workshops I lead for more than a decade. I never tire of those poems -- spare, luminous, graceful and full of surprises." - Cecilia Woloch Lucinda Michele Knapp Lucinda Michele Knapp (Michele) left a low-paying but rewarding career as a fine art teacher for a low-paying but rewarding career as a writer. Along the way she's learned to spin swords, eat fire, speak bad Italian, deep-fry Twinkies, twirl tassels, flee seedy motels and shoot roman candles. She's been a loaded Santa, a kung fu student, and a screaming mime. Her short stories sketch out images in impressionistic brushstrokes, because she's still a painter at heart, and her journalism has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Alternative Press, Variety, and Coagula Art Journal. She is a fourth-generation Valley girl, where there is a park, a street and a ranch named after her great-granddad, and where she can taste the heat of history in her bones—a sense of perspective for which she is grateful to her ancestors. She lives in Los Angeles. Ms. Knapp says, "The only people for me …are the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Kerouac. I've had free pancakes on Fat Tuesday at the Glendale IHOP with Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula and she says hi. That pretty much tops it all. Cora M. Moncrief Cora M. Moncrief has won the Organization of Black Screenwriter' s National Script Writing Competition in the Television Sitcom category, is an alumna of the Warner Brothers Comedy Writer's Workshop, and has written for ABC's Hangin' With Mr. Cooper. She is the author of a book entitled When Colored Was Cool, which focuses on the life of blues singer, Bessie Smith. The most important year of Bessie's life is chronicled as it might have been seen through the eyes of a young, idealistic reporter. Filled with laughter and love, freaks and geeks, and loyalty and friendship, this story is a wild, memorable romp containing colorful characters and unforgettable moments. When Colored Was Cool also details the lives of African American female performers who traveled on what was then called "the chittlin' circuit" during the 1930's and 40's. In the end, the book is essentially about following dreams, honoring friendships and never giving up hope. It also highlights the life of a woman who is too often forgotten or only remembered for her contribution to the creation of the blues. It tells of a woman who overcame incredible poverty and adversity, and helped create a musical legacy that lives on to this day. Unlike the sound bite scandals of today, this is scandalous behavior which is also very provocative and thought provoking. Sparsely written in screenplay style, it amazed me how completely it took me into the scenes. It was like tumbling through a magnifying glass into those intriguing background scenes of colored speakeasies in "Fried Green Tomatoes" or "The Color Purple" with the lyrics of the blues moving the story line along. Reviewer's Comment Despite the title, this fictionalized history goes far beyond anything racial. Author Moncrief suggests that on one level this is a story of acceptance. For me it also stimulates thoughts and debate on many of today's situations: the complicated society of working women, sexual roles and identities, domestic violence, life on the road, the rap artists and the thugs and the players. . . and on and on. This book also inspired me to delve deeper into Bessie Smith research and I guess that is the greatest compliment that can be paid to any author. - J. Beggs Reina Prado (aka Santa Perversa) Reina Alejandra Prado challenges taboos imposed on Latina women by delving into the realm of the erotic in her published poetry collection Santa Perversa and Other Erotic Poems (San Diego: Calaca Press, 2001). In the midst of the Arizona monsoons, Prado carved out her poetic niche affirming that sexesmiotroeró rtico (sex is my other erotic). The aridness of the Sonora desert delivered her to the foggy landscape of San Francisco and the smog concrete milieu of Los Angeles. She has read to audiences throughout California, Arizona, New York City, Washington, DC, and Mexico City. From 1998-2000, Ms. Prado performed with the intergenerational, multi-disciplinary, Chicana collective L.A. Coyotas. Since 2004, she is a member of The NeoSpinsters, who premiered Second Wind at The Poetry & Sexuality Conference hosted at the University of Stirling, Scotland. The United States presentation was at the Performance Studies International Conference hosted by Brown University, April 2005. Prado later premiered an interactive durational piece entitled The Ghost of Us at Highways Performance Space. This piece honors the memory of women who have died in Ciudad Juárez for the show "Not About Me," curated by Denise Uyehara. Inspired by the spirit and attitude of Santa Perversa, Prado created another interactive performance Take a Piece of My Heart for the "Love & Sex at Midnight" show curated by LeVan Hawkins, also at Highways. Ms. Prado is a doctoral candidate in the Program of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. In 2004, she was awarded a Smithsonian Dissertation Fellowship where she conducted research at the Archives of American Art (2005-2005). Actively involved in the arts milieu, Prado has curated exhibitions on contemporary American Art, organized arts education events for LACMA, SPARC and Plaza de la Raza, and taught university courses in Chicano Studies, Women Studies, and Mexican Art History. Reina Prado's link to Calaca Press: http://www.calacapress.com/reinaaprado.html Judith Terzi Shiny Things Make Things Come Back (2002) was Ms. Terzi's first chapbook, a collection inspired, in part, by her mother's five-year long, see-saw adventure with severe vascular dementia. In her second collection, Lightning Bugs Don't Travel Westward (2004), while a few pieces relate to this illness, most are reflections on nature, transitions, institutions, or on the general political and social dementia of our times. Ms. Terzi's work has appeared in various print and online publications, including The Teacher's Voice (2005), the anthology, An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11, Moondance (Moondance.org) . Ms. Terzi says, "While most of my poetry is in English, I do enjoy writing in French and Spanish as well. My CD, Wings of the Andes, is a blend of old and new poems. I hold an M.A. in French Literature and am a career teacher, having taught many different subject matters at every level of instruction. The highlights of my career have been teaching English and French at an American School in Algiers, Algeria; writing at California State University, Los Angeles; and French language and literature at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California." Reviewer Comment "Judy has been quick in sensing the rhythm or beat of a poem. She can tell when a line has lost the rhythm. She has been showing a keen interest in correct usage of English language...When she recites poetry, her posture could be improved, however; she drops her head forward, and a bit to one side. She seems to enjoy creative work. - G. Metzner, Ms. Terzi's third grade teacher Kathleen Tyler Kathleen Tyler's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Runes, Solo, Margie, Coe Review, Visions International, Diner, and Poetry Motel. She currently teaches English at a public school in Los Angeles. Some poets who she especially likes are Marsha de la O, Larissa Szporluk, Yusef Komunyakaa, H.D., and Garcia Lorca. Kathleen's first book of poetry, The Secret Box, is forthcoming in September. Reviewer Comments The Secret Box is full of gorgeous and dangerous poems; poems with the flickering intensity of film noir; poems in which violence or tenderness -- or both -- might erupt at any moment, and do. I admire Kathleen Tyler's craft and her courage. These poems are gutsy and lyrical, risky and magical; they speak of, and to, a dark and beautiful world. - Cecilia Woloch Negotiating terrain that is both provocative and revealing, these poems leave the senses singed with formidable hope and startling clarity. - Jawanza Dumisani