transform lives through art
Current Creative Residency
Upcoming Creative Residencies
Archived Creative Residencies
Riverfront Park Suites #135, 120 and 170
Press Release
Here at Home: 6 Artists
Lighthouse Writers Workshop and PlatteForum have came together to offer a collaborative residency for three visual and two literary artists for one month this summer of 2010, to work together and produce new work around the themes presented by the Denver Biennial of the Americas: Innovation, Sustainability, The Arts, and Community.
ARTISTS
David Ocelotl Garcia, Life in Our Hands
Christopher & Rachel Smith Hecker, Life Portraits: Laura, Troy, Aztechan
Tsehai Johnson, Table Lessons
Tei Kobayashi, Remembering the Forgotten: Sheltered Vision
Cara Lopez Lee, Homes Within, Communities Without
POETS RESPOND
Dee Casalaina, On the Riverfront
J Diego Frey, Eat and/Or be Eaten; Triolet for Tei
Ginny Hoyle, Here at Home
Roger Thomas Wehling, Welcome to Little Raven's Place
HERE AT HOME
One day, a keen-eyed wanderer stumbles on a leafy suite of rooms beside a skimpy river where men once hunted gold. It is a vacant space brim full of ideas. A work space strewn with ink and paint, voices and tape, with monitors, hammers and wires, with clay and glaze, and the soulful ruins of an old mountain cabin. Here is a workshop laced with light and the slow thunder of passing trains. Here is a space where art is lived and breathed and shared with keen-eyed wanderers' and with a new generation of seekers hungry to learn. This is a safe place to unleash the storms of memory. A good place to turn loose the wild dogs of imagination. A sane place to question what you know. This is Judy's place. Home for the fearless. An airstrip on the South Platte where flights of fancy take off daily. A forum where lives are voiced, stories converge and truth unfolds.
~ Ginny Hoyle, 2010
Welcome to Little Raven’s Place
I came first in misty rain
fine and straight, to a new place
across the river, across the tracks
where trains slow down for the big bend
where the
Platte zigs,
where the Arapahoe
camped.
They’re building bridges here
with long strands
of
metaphorical wire, steel words,
small acres of paint to daub the lives
of some
of us in solemn shrines, shattered
china reassembled as Buddhas’ begging bowls,
canvas snarled and scratched to submission
the doorway to somewhere always
open,
and just outside, a shelter so incomplete
it covers worlds.
Here on the fringe of this other Denver
what village arises
amid
steel and glass
where the trains pass
slowly, close enough to touch
smell taste
hear feel in the bones?
The screech of metal
on metal pierces the fragrant air:
something’s
cooking.
Here an earnest band of artists dwell
in newly sacred space
sanctified
by Indian campfires, hobo memories,
government grants and honest labor.
Bridges
to futures incomplete.
Find here plates painted
with invitations to dine on words,
pictures
with stories to tell.
Find wooden and metal dreamscapes
hidden in vibrant closets
to
recall more metabolic entities
embodied in their own worlds of words.
Find the door between you and me
between worlds
where we are
what
we want
what might be.
Find the tree of life a seedling
emerged from struggles
to
survive, to live in the layers
within color and light.
Find the house of forever
taking shape, always becoming.
No future, no past,
the bridge circles
from now to here
and
back home again.
~ Roger Thomas Wehling, 2010
The 2010 Biennial of the Americas is an international event that celebrates the culture, ideas and people of the Western Hemisphere, hosted by the City of Denver.
Tsehai Johnson
Detail: Chris & Rachel Hecker
Cara Lopez Lee with Audrey Haynes
David Ocelotl Garcia
Tei Kobayashi with poet Ginny Hoyle
This project is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and SCFD Tier III. Platte Forum/Lighthouse Writers Workshop is proud to partner with the Biennial of the Americas, a celebration of the arts, an international event that celebrates the culture, ideas and people of the Western Hemisphere. During the month of July, the Biennial will offer provocative talks by world leaders, hot music, stunning art and great food. For more information about the largest international event of the year in the U.S., please visit www.biennialoftheamericas.org