Contact Mimi at mimiallin@gmail.com. This blog started in 2006 as a public journal for the year-long performance, "Nostalgia: The Poetess at Green Lake." I hoped, by setting up my desk & working in public (at Green Lake in Seattle, WA), to communicate the awareness that there is a poet within reach & committed to you. From the project's culmination in July 2007 to the present time, I have continued this work in other spheres for other communities.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
PEG &FRANK @ Gallery 110
Saturday 8 October at 5PM
Featured ArtsCrush Event
Gallery 110 (TK Building)
Seattle, WA
PEG &FRANK is an elastic collective born in 2011 from the imaginations A K Mimi Allin & Vanessa DeWolf. PEG &FRANK bring visual art, writing poetry, performance art and critical viewing together to manifest a new field of work that lives between the art object and the viewer. We plan events for galleries and artists that facilitate a closer viewing of art, using a process that requires an intensive amount of time in the gallery. Those experiences are then shared with the artists and their audiences at public and private events.
For the exhibit of manipulated photographs by artists Ray Schutte and Jan Cook (Gallery 110), Peg &Frank spent 20 hours with the works of art, including an overnight. We navigated our responsive structure and edited and culled our materials to what was viewed in the gallery on on Saturday night. It was a thrill and an honor to have shared that process with poets Stephen Roxborough & Lyn Coffin and with fellow art maven Mylinda Sneed and cellist Natalie Hall.
To bring PEG &FRANK into your art space, contact: mimiallin@gmail.com.
POETRY POLAR BEAR PLUNGE, 2nd Annual Date: Saturday 12 December, 2009 Location: Green Lake (Seattle, WA) Temperature: 29F Organizer: The Poetess at Green Lake Polar Bear Poets: Julie Jane, Noah Star Weaver, A. K. Allin, Clinton Bliss, Vanessa DeWolf, Dave Kuhns and Carissa Quisenberry Not a Poet/Not a Polar Bear: Lydia Swartz Friends: Mylinda Sneed, Beckett Arnold, Kate Freeman, Bond Aster Photos & Media: John Cornicello, CityArts, MyGreenLake, Komo News
The Weather It may look sunny, but it was cold, cold cold. There was a week-long arctic blast hitting the region. The low on Saturday was 23F and Green Lake was frozen at the edges. I couldn't feel my feet after the dip. Next year, booties for sure, and more poems, poems, poemS!!
Congratulations! Congratulations to all the polar bears, poets, helper cubs and fans (you too Mr. Bear) who made this event spectacular! Thanks for being so bold and brave and high-spirited and for coming together to make a proud, loud statement for pOetry. I'm honored to be part of this community.
Oh yes, we DID! On Saturday 12 December, seven brave pioneers ambled to Green Lake and stripped down to their poetry. Seven brave poets made a splaSh heard round the globe. What did it say? It said, "poetry matters."
Brave Poets Twice as many poets were signed up to plunge this year, but then it grew cold, very veRy cold. Then came the frost. Puddles froze. Some poets fell sick. Others were smart and stayed in their dens. A few were held back by family members. Alas, when the day of reckoning arrived, the arctic air stayed on though it was predicted to go. Sun shone on the thin crust covering the lake. And the hair stood up on our skin. The we who were left gave our poetry up and broke the prose that day. WhooOO!!
Polar Poetry I wrote a poem called "You Came out of the Twinkling Sky." Julie Jane and Noah each read part of an adorable rhyming poem. Clinton read a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. Vanessa wrote one called "Take Back My Alaska." Carissa sang "The Garden" by Shel Silverstein. Dave Kuhns read a poem he authored that morning, which ended with a raised fist and a, "Go, go go!!" And so we did. We counted to three and we went, went wenT!!
Ice on the Lake Witnesses commented on the curious sounds the ice made as we plunged. The ice swelled ever so gently and, as it did, it crinkled and cracked and broken in a wave.
P.S. Thanks to Kate, not one pair of eyeglasses were lost this year.
