Words and art collide at Red Brick Gallery

Words and art have been mixed in many ways for centuries, most commonly in music where lyrics help melodies along telling stories.

​Or is it in reverse?
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Words also have made their way in to much of the art world with some descriptors in pre-renaissance paintings to more modernist works like Rene’ Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” or “This is not a pipe” written under a painting of a pipe.

​ More recently, famed post-modernist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s drew words, letters, number and a variety of marks that were drenched with symbolism  and social meanings to invoke responses by his viewers.
Hundreds of artists use words.
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Artists and writers have often even collaborated from illustrated books to inspired pieces created by poets and painters alike.
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Two years ago the Red Brick Gallery and Gift Shop in Foxburg hosted a fairly unique exhibition to this area when they invited artists to submit works to be interpreted by writers. An artist's work, mostly paintings, was then given to a writer who had over a month to create a poem, or short story based on their reaction to the work.

Some were more literal than others but they were all presented in a show titled “Ekphrasis,” a term meaning a work of writing created as a description or in reaction to a work of art. 
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According to gallery director Jason Lewis that show that featured over two dozen artists and writers was one of the best attended shows the gallery has had in many years.
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The writers were mostly from the Bridge Literary Arts Center, a Venango County based collective and selected artists from northwestern Pennsylvania.

Reception from 2 to 4 p.m Saturday May 30 with poetry reading at the Red Brick Gallery in Foxburg, Pa.
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This year Lewis proposed a “Reverse Ekphrasis” exhibition where the writers submitted a piece for the artists to create a work. Two months were given for the creation process and all who agreed completed their work.

Reverse Ekphrasis opens today (May 30) with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. that will include poetry readings in the gallery with the art works as a backdrop.
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15 artists, many from Oil City and Meadville, as well as 15 poets from all around the region are included in the exhibition in a wide range of artworks from a mixed media sculptural piece by Meadville teenager Leah Hyatt who painted directly on an old record that she mounted on an old phonograph player displayed on a pedestal to a painting/jewelry collaboration between Rafi Perez and Klee Angelie, a couple from Oil City. 
Writers Phil Terman, former professor at Clarion University, and founder of the Bridge Literary Arts Center and the husband and wife writers Hilary and Brady Buchanan, who each submitted separate works, all weave personal experiences into their expressive poems.

The show will run through July 5 at the gallery located at 17 Main Street in Foxburg. Gallery hours are Fridays 1 to 6 p.m., Saturdays 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sundays noon to 5 p.m.
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More information: visit the website at alleghenyriverstone.org/eventand look for the Reverse Ekphrasis exhibition.
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