Celebrated artists will engage audiences in an afternoon of conversation, poetry, performance, music, and visual arts at the annual @Salon from noon-5 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at the University Galleries in Uptown Normal, 11 Uptown Circle, Suite 103.
The event will feature presentations by Chicago-based writer, interdisciplinary artist, and curator Krista Franklin, and sound artist Jonah Mixon-Webster, author of Stereo(TYPE).
A theater of conversation and exchange, @Salon welcomes artists and arts enthusiasts from area colleges and universities, the larger Bloomington-Normal community, and beyond. Sponsored by Illinois State University’s Creative Writing Program and the Department of English, the event is free and open to the public.
Franklin, the author of Study of Love & Black Body, is a writer and visual artist whose works have appeared in Poetry, Black Camera, Copper Nickel, Callaloo, Vinyl, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Her visual art has exhibited at The Obama Foundation Summit, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, The Columbia Museum of Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and was featured on 20th Century Fox’s Empire. Find more on Franklin.
Mixon-Webster is a poet/sound artist, and educator from Flint, Michigan. His debut collection of poetry and conceptual art, Stereo(TYPE) was selected by Tyrone Williams for the 2017 Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press. A doctoral student in English Studies at Illinois State, he is the recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, The Conversation Literary Festival, and Callaloo Writer’s Workshop. Mixon-Webster’s poetry and hybrid works are featured or forthcoming in Barzakh Journal, Muzzle, Callaloo, Spoon River Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2017, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018.
In addition to showcasing featured artists, @Salon will include premiere screenings of two poignant documentary films: Many Loves, One Heart, which depicts courageous stories of the LGBTQ movement in Jamaica; and Eavesdropping on Souls, which showcases the work of some of Haiti’s most talented artists. Works by featured artists will be available for purchase.
This program is co-sponsored by Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and by Illinois State University’s Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs.
Find more information about @Salon at the website, or contact Duriel Estelle Harris via email at atsalonisu@gmail.com. Find details about other events at the Illinois State University Department of English website.
The Department of English at Illinois State University is dedicated to providing an environment that facilitates individual and communal creative, intellectual, and administrative work, and outreach.
