Art by Sarah Walko
I long to enter the unholy
veins of lightning
like the sound of breaking glass,
to trace the shudder that
flashes through clouds and shakes
the dead in their new shoes;
to lie down in the soft coffins of long grass
as in a woman’s thighs,
and never breathe again
unless my breathing were the wind.
I long to fall forever
between stars, into the dark
like a hole someone is still digging;
to burrow in the drifts of snow like silence;
to be the shadow that walks away
when a man dies.
(First published in Into the Void)
Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Right Hand Pointing, Antiphon and The Sun Magazine. He placed second for the 2019 Fischer Poetry Prize, and won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television and radio. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017 Sagging Meniscus Press), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other (2019 Finishing Line Press). More of his work, both poetry and humor, is at kurtluchs.com.
Sarah Walko has a BA in studio art practices from the University of Maryland and an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. For the past twelve years she has curated for institutions, non-profits and independent projects. She served as director of two arts organizations and is a contributing writer on contemporary art, literature and film for numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Eyes Towards the Dove and Drain Magazine of Arts and Culture. She is currently writing a book of essays on contemporary art practices and cultural theory.
She is currently the Director of Education and Community Outreach at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey. Prior to this position and for the past three years she was the Director of Arts Programming at Marble House Project, a new artists’ residency program located in Dorset, Vermont with a focus on multidisciplinary creative practices. Prior to developing the Marble House Project she held the position of executive director of Triangle Arts Association, a non-profit arts organization in Brooklyn, New York from 2007- 2014. Before this position she was a curator at Savannah College of Arts and Design for almost two years and executed dozens and dozens of institutional exhibitions large and small.
Recent Curatorial projects include Voice with artist Fernando Orellana in SpringBreak Art Show (March 2018), Approaching Vibrancy at Morris Arts, NJ (March 2018), Everything Else is too Narrow at Baerum Kunstall in Oslo, Norway (October 2016) Advances and Retreats and Decomposing Hierarchies, and Crest and Trough, Public art video projections, Manhattan Bridge Anchorage, NYC (October 2015 & 2016) , The World and its Things in the Middle of Their Intimacy, Fridman Gallery, NYC (November 2014), and A Cage Went in Search of a Bird, Radiator Gallery, NYC (October 2013).
She was an invited Panelist, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Craft and Horror in Contemporary Art in April 2015, A Visiting Artist Lecturer at Endicott College, MA (Winter 2015), Visiting Lecturer, Kansas City Art Institute, KC and Visiting Artist and Juror, University of Missouri, KC (April 2015), Visiting Artist, Roger Williams University, RI (October 2013), Visiting Artist, Savannah College of Art and Design, Painting Department/Career Development, GA (2013), A Resident Artist, Elizabeth Foundation, New York, NY (2012), Resident Artist, I-Park, CT (April 2012). Her film work includes Co-Writer, Co-Director, co- set design and actor in independent film Make Bright the Arrows with artist John Ensor Parker and Lux/Nox with artist Malado Baldwin, Art Director/Co- Creator/Composer – El Cadaver Exquisito independent feature film by Victor Ruano.
Recent Exhibitions include Case Studies at Gallery Aferro (Newark, NJ), Rewoven, Innovative Fiber Arts (Queens Community College, N), I Embody (Marietta College, OH), Earth Revisited, Film and Video exhibition on the Manhattan Bridge (DUMBO Brooklyn) To Be Everything, Silo Gallery (New Milford, Connecticut), Audubon and the Avian Experience (Marietta College, Marietta Ohio), Ley Lines, University of Wyoming Art Museum (Laramie, WY) Small Pleasures, Ulrich Museum of Art (Witchita, Kansas), Raising the Temperature, Rainforest Art Foundation (Queens, New York), Raising the Temperature, Queens Museum of Art (Queens, New York) A Necessary Shift, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (New York, New York) You and I Do Not Come Lightly to the Blank Page, Solo exhibition at Roger Williams College (Rhode Island) DUMBO Glow, Film and Video exhibition on the Manhattan Bridge (DUMBO Brooklyn), Codex Dynamic, Curated video exhibition on the Manhattan Bridge (DUMBO Brooklyn), Preternatural Exhibition, National Museum of Nature (Ottawa Canada).
Recent Comments