theArtWorks™…and Art Village is pleased to announce a special program series in conjunction with the upcoming “OPENING THE CURTAIN” exhibit:
“Exploring the Mystery of Creativity” will feature photographer, author, and retired museum curator Brian H. Peterson in conversation with several distinguished guests, exploring both the creative life and the creativity in all of us, through readings, videos, music, and informal discussion.
PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:
Sunday, September 29, 2:00 PM: Painter, poet, and curator Helen Mirkil
Saturday, October 26, 2:00 PM: Stephen Jaffe, Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition at Duke University, and Michael Alec Rose, Associate Professor of Composition at the Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University
Sunday, November 3, 2:00 PM: Mark Opgrand, Associate Pastor at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wilmington, North Carolina
Sunday, September 29, 2019 2:00 PM
On the Road to Damascus: The “Call”
Special guest: painter, poet, and curator Helen Mirkil
Helen Mirkil is a graduate of both the BFA and MFA programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Her paintings are included in numerous prestigious public and private collections, and have been exhibited at the Berman Museum of Art, Mary Washington University, the Michener Art Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, and the Butler Institute of American Art. Also a prolific and accomplished poet, MIrkil’s first book of poetry, “The Sower on the Cliffs,” was published by Book Arts Press.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
John Weiss (1941-2017) was a formidable figure in contemporary art photography—a master teacher who ran the MFA photography program at the University of Delaware for more than three decades. Weiss was also a gifted photographer of people and places, with an instinct for the rhythm and music of visual design as well as an uncanny ability to reveal the deeper layers of human experience. In this first of three programs, Brian H. Peterson and his wife, painter and poet Helen Mirkil, read excerpts from a 2011 conversation between Weiss and Peterson recorded at Weiss’s home in Elkton, Maryland, and published in Peterson 2018 book “I Give My Eyes…” Beginning with their own circuitous journeys on the creative path, the conversation eventually arrives at Weiss’s personal “road to Damascus” experience, when he collapsed in front of a photograph at a gallery opening and then committed himself to a life in creative photography.
Note: Programs will take place at
GALLERY VERRAZZANO
theArtWorks™…and Art Village
200 Willard Street
Wilmington NC 28401
Note: information on subsequent programs will be included in a press release in mid-October