"A Sense of Place" brings poet, photographer together to explore a personal American South
Posted March 25, 2009
A photographer of traditional southern gardens and a Cambridge poet transplanted from Mississippi will present work together April 29 as part of Lesley University’s unique Word and Image series.
Pearle Fryer’s Garden, Bishopville, South Carolina, 2002
The series, held at the University Hall Amphitheater, brings formerly unacquainted artists and authors together to prepare a one-time collaborative program of word and image. The April 29 event is titled “A Sense of Place.”
“They meet, they explore each others work, they find out where it intersects, what the common themes and feelings are,” said Joyce Wadlington, Director of Continuing Education at Lesley. “It’s an experiment where the quality of the artists and writers is so high that we’re treated to a very special event in the end.”
Photographer Vaughn Sills is preparing to publish Places for the Spirit: Traditional African-American Gardens of the South, a project begun on a September afternoon on an Athens, Ga. front porch more than 15 years ago. Journeys through the south to find similar gardens followed, resulting in a remarkable series of photographs highlighting the use of bottles, tires, tool sheds, hanging pots, vegetable patches and all manner of household objects repurposed to create a spiritual garden.
James Cox’s Yard, Oglethorple, Georgia, 1987
A corresponding exhibition shows at the Miller Block Gallery, 38 Newbury St., Boston, until April 18.
Poet Linda Larson spent more than a decade in Madison County, Miss. where she worked as a features writer for The Jackson Advocate, an African-American newspaper. Struggling with mental illness, homelessness and alcoholism, she moved to Boston twenty years ago. Larson worked for five years as an editor and contributor for Spare Change News, a Cambridge-based paper advocating for the homeless. She is a poet and author, as well. Her first book of poems, Washing the Stones, was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2007.
The Wed., April 29 event, titled “A Sense of Place” will be held at 7 p.m. at the University Hall Amphitheater, 1815 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge.