This autobiographical exhibit is a  time-based art installation that coalesces as its layers change, deepen, and grow over the four weeks it is open. It is a meandering interactive river of poetry, mythic portals, playfulness, song and visual storytelling.  On each of the four Saturday openings, there is an interactive performance that includes poem readings, live music, scenes performed from a speculative verse play, music videos, and co-creative community activities. Though this show is conceived of and directed by one person, it is very much community-created in that several wonderful guest artists make significant contributions to the exhibit and many beloved friend folks participate in the live performances.

As they enter the exhibit, attendees are given the guiding Mother-Map that helps them find their way through, and  invites them into all the spaces. Throughout each of the three separate spaces in the triptych a different time aspect is explored: what was/ what is/ what could be. All of these spaces are connected to each other through the flow of the River Now, the “what is”, and the portals between spaces. In the River Now room, there are participatory places like a reading corner with zooks (zine-books) and half-books, an idea & creation corner, and a listening and resting nest. The Star Death room represents “what was” in the past, as well as geologic time/ deep time: the genesis of the universe and everything we know. In this room short song videos will be on loop–a new one added each week. The first song video, “Human City ” is one of the last three (unreleased) songs of the St. Louis feminist experimental rock band active from 1999-2003, The Star Death. The lyrics and the images in these videos help the story continue to emerge, and their interaction with the River Now creates a sort of inventive time-traveling fermentation.  This interactive time-traveling continues in the sense that both  the River Now and the Star Death rooms contain assemblages made up of note-scraps, artifacts, drawings, audio and poem-bits culled from their respective times  & spaces.

The third space in the triptych is really the WHAT COULD BE, the imaginal future.  This is our liminal space for dreaming the future together.  It is where we practice becoming the imaginal cells for human evolution–the imaginal cells being the only cells in the caterpillar that carry the blueprint for the future butterfly.  In this area, which is literally outside of  “what was” and “what is”, in the artist courtyard, gardens and A-frame shed,  projects will take place wherein we ease each other’s anxieties, build connections,  and explore nature’s inherent knowing. Here we will dream through and with the generative frameworks of emergent strategy and solidarity economy. We will take inspiration thereof and vision imaginatively and wildly together– all of these co- creations and visions will culminate in a celebratory community art ritual.

OPEN HOURS & EVENTS:

Thursdays Aug. 8, 15, & 22
3:30-6pm (artist present)
Fridays Aug. 9, 16, & 23
4-6pm (open gallery)
Saturdays Aug. 3, 10, 17, & 24
12-3pm (open gallery)
3:3-6pm (interactive performances that includes poem readings, live music, scenes performed from a speculative verse play, music videos and co-creative community activities)

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Blueberry Morningsnow is a person who writes poems and songs and speculative myth-in-verse.  She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published a book of poems and a chapbook of poems; also it should be noted that her sensibility has been shaped by the lifelong activity of  assembling little typed poem and drawing collections for friends and loved ones, and long ago she wrote and published a zine. She has also recorded and performed many songs in her lifetime–on her own as well as in bands. She was a member of the St. Louis feminist experimental rock trio The Star Death, and the short lived duo Hroom Hroom.  In the past decade +,  she has continued on in her art-making and song- and poem-writing activities, as well as  participated in poetry readings here & there, and several art exhibits, including an ongoing image + text collaboration called Proto-Visions with the artist Aleta Lanier (who was also in the Star Death and Hroom Hroom). She lives with her son at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa , where she teaches humanities and DIY rock band classes.  @blueberryelizabethmorningsnow