Join us this October for a celebration of art and music! On Friday evening, October 17th, poet Anita Skeen and linocut artist, Laura Delind, will offer a poetry reading and discuss collaboration across different genres and media. Saturday, October 18th, we will reflect together on a poem and correlating linocut image and then spend the morning in our choice of a workshop in either one of their mediums. Following lunch we will have a final session including some new and not yet published pieces. We will conclude by 1:30 in time for those who would like to enjoy Robert Ragoonanan’s fall piano recital at 2:00pm.
Anita Skeen is currently Professor Emerita in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University where she was the Founding Director of The RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU and is the Series Editor for Wheelbarrow Books. She taught students in kindergarten through high school while working with the Kansas Arts Commission’s Artist in the Schools Program; in traditional venues such as college classrooms as a Visiting Writer and Writer in Residence; and in senior citizens’ centers, libraries, and at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for over 40 years. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation in Saginaw, MI. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry. Her poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Collaboration is an important aspect of her work and she currently involved in writing and visual art projects with poets Jane Taylor and Cindy Hunter Morgan.
Laura B. DeLind earned her PhD in Anthropology from Michigan State University where she worked for over forty years. As an anthropologist, she is recognized internationally for her work in alternative agriculture and local food and farming. Her research and professional writing appear in numerous books and journal articles and led to her receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society.
As an artist, she has always been fascinated by indigenous art and artistic expression, especially Inuit art. After her retirement, she has devoted herself fulltime to printmaking. The linocut offers her the opportunity to explore the endless interactions of positive and negative space. She also enjoys the linocut’s affinity for high contrast and spontaneity. Her work appears in galleries and private collections nationally. She lives, works, and teaches printmaking in Mason, Michigan.