Hobart Festival of Women Writers is pleased to present for the second, consecutive year, an exhibit of the work of women artists. The exhibit, WORDS & IMAGES features the work of eight artists and writer/artists whose work will be displayed in The Hobart Community Center, September 6, 7 & 8th.

The featured artists:

Keisha Gaye-Anderson:  I always tell people I’m “primarily a poet.” It was my first form of creative expression and my go-to genre when a thought experiment keeps rolling around in my head. But poetry is just one mode of my self-expression.

I truly hate boxes. Yet, from pixels to brick and mortar, we have to contend with them. So we might as well have fun, right?

My favorite things go something like this:

1. Complete and total freedom to walk through the world as my whole, undiluted self;
2. Ackee and Saltfish (hey, Jamericans have a peculiar kind of homesickness that only food from Yard can quell);
3. and excellent, mind-twisting sci-fi stories where non-human characters are allowed to use contractions when they speak.  Keisha-Gaye.ink

Lisbeth Firmin is a contemporary American realist known for her urban landscapes. For over five decades her work has been in hundreds of solo and group show across the country and internationally. Her paintings and prints are in several public collections including the New York Historical Society, Provincetown Art Association & Museum, Munson Williams Procter Arts Institute, Arnot Museum, Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Fleming Museum, University of Texas, Cape Cod Museum, and Hofstra University. Lisbeth Firmin.com

Esther Cohen:  I’ve often been asked to write a brief biography, to explain who I am–one of those linear statements of life that no one likes to read: I was born here, moved there, traveled in between. The way we talk about ourselves so rarely tells the reader much: those rational details–my height, my weight, number of husbands, number of children. Titles of my published stories, poems. How I wrote my current novel.

My book, Book Doctor took years to write.

What’s often most interesting about all of us is what we do not say. Here’s what I can tell you, that you might like to know. I love to write, and always have: the way words fall out right onto a page, out from some mysterious place I do not know. I love stories, especially stories from strangers: the tall foreign woman who sat next to you on a plane, who tells you every single thing she can about her life, then vanishes at the Cleveland airport, leaving you with her story forever.  Esther Cohen.com

Margot Farrington is a poet, writer, and performer. Trained in theater—her earliest love—she has read and performed widely as poet and as storyteller, garnering praise both for her work and for dynamic readings and performances. Farrington is the author of three full-length collections, including “Scanning For Tigers” (Free Scholar Press). Other writing includes essays, interviews, and reviews of poetry and art. Visual works include collage—pieces she has exhibited in galleries. Margot Farrington.net

 
Lisa Jacobson: While in my teens, I followed the route taken by our ancestors 40,000 years ago into the deep recesses of dark flint scented caves where they rendered layered images in earth pigments. As with the first spark of life on Earth, a “miraculous alchemy” worked its magic on these beings–waking them up from a borderless dream-like state where they were simply part of the whole of nature. In this setting I felt a deep, direct and undeniable connection with these people, my ancestors. I was home.  

A poet and visual artist, Bertha Rogers has shown her paintings, illuminations, and artist books in more than 250 juried and solo exhibitions throughout the US and internationally. She has received several NYSCA and NYFA grants for her interdisciplinary work. Her poetry has been published in several chapbooks and full-length collections; and her translations of Beowulf and the 95 riddle-poems from the Exeter books have been published. She founded, with her late husband, Ernest M. Fishman, Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills. Bertha Rogers.com

 
Lisa Wujnovich writes poetry, makes handmade books, and farms at Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, New York, where she spends much more time with plants than she does with humans. Her publications include the chapbook Fieldwork(Finishing Line Press) and This Place Called Us(Stockport Flats Press). She co-edited the anthology, The Lake Rises, poems to and for our bodies of water (Stockport Flats Press).  Her handmade haiku books are based on Subsistence Primer,a haiku manuscript written about the vegetables and herbs she knows intimately from living thirty years on her vegetable farm.Mountain Dell Farm NY

Tracy Jacknow:  I was born in Brooklyn in 1947 and raised on the south shore of Long Island. We lived in a unique area known as the “Idle Hour Artist Colony” where French Normandy farm buildings were surrounded by canals and marshland, complete with a brick tower that a pianist lived in. The residents were actors and artist’s and retired vaudeville characters. I was fortunate to spend time with creative people like Jim Dine. It was a childhood of inspiration and creativity. Some summers were spent in the mountains of upstate New York, helping my grandmother at the tourist home she owned on Main Street waiting tables and hanging crisp white sheets on the line, singing and entertaining guests after dinner. At college, I had the opportunity to spend my junior year in Siena, Italy. My early experiences gave me exposure to a world of creative minds and alternative life styles. Tracy Jacknow.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORDS & IMAGES, curated by Tracy Jacknow is an exhibit of the work of eight women artists and writer/artists will be displayed in The Hobart Community Center September 6, 7, & 8th as part of Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2019 which will feature workshops, readings, and a public discussion with 20 Participating Writers. Books and Artwork will be available for sale.

Registration is open at www.hobartfestivalofwomenwriters.com

Support the arts in The Catskills. Contribute whatever you can to Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2019 Indiegogo Fundraising Campaign. All funds raised go to pay the honoraria and travel assist to our Participating Writers.  Indiegogo Festival 2019

Support the arts. Now more than ever.