Come talk poetry or check out some books from Iowa City Poetry’s FREE community lending library!
on view at PS1 Close
Thursday 2-10p
Friday 2-6p
Saturday 11a-8p
This week for Art-a-thon Bread and Roses, we highlight reading as a valuable form of research, production, community building and life-long learning. In this 24/7 productivity cycle of late capitalism, we make time to read! From September 21-23 visitors to Public Space One are invited to read together, log the book titles they're currently reading, share excerpts, and subscribe to the Art-a-thon reading challenge to complete a book by Saturday, September 23rd. All reading hours are hosted at the Close House. Remote participants are encouraged too! Read from wherever you are and send the title/author and/or a photo of a page to gallery@publicspaceone.com
Don't have a current book?? You can check one out from one of the many libraries hosted at PS1 including the CAS Reading Room, IC Poetry Library, PS1 Zine Library, and LGBTQ Iowa Library.
Shout out to the projects/artists who inspired taking this time, including The Center for Afrofuturist Studies Reading Room, Dewey Decimal Days by Bureau for Open Culture, Jen P. Harris ARTISTS READ, Shannon Stratton, Barry Phipps Off the Shelfies: Portraits in Reading, GenderFail, and Wendy's Subway.
"CONTENT" can have different meanings depending on the context, it can refer to:
1- Things that are held or included in something.
2- To the substance or material that is created and shared through various media
3- Being content refers to a state of satisfaction // happiness
Words have the power to both uplift and hurt us deeply. Hurtful words can have a profound emotional impact that can last a lifetime. Words, although they’re intangible, can cause ‘real’ damage. Would it be different if we could ‘see’ those words? What if we could ‘literally’ break the words that were meant to hurt us?
That’s the purpose of creating “CONTENT”, an interactive installation, where people are encouraged to interact with a sculptural object and destroy it.
Did someone ever say something that hurt you deeply?
Do you // Did you have a hard time recovering from it?
How are you//did you break away from it?
Can you share some uplifting words with others struggling to break free from pain?
Despite being different, we’ve all been hurt, and sometimes by the same words. Together we can break away from it… Together we can break them.
Kymbyrly Koester presents a small dish on each hour — vegan, gluten-free, and made from scratch. Come eat! And rest …or not!
Drop in for an hour of gentle yoga led by Jennifer New in the PS1 Close Dance Hall.
Bring your own mat if you can — some are available to borrow!
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Jennifer has been teaching yoga since 2010 and practicing it since 1992. She received her 300-hour certification at Kripalu in Massachusetts and later got her 500-hour YTT in that same style. Her approach is gentle, casual, and community-oriented. As a certified TRE instructor, she has deep training in trauma. Jennifer is a creative writer dedicated to using the arts for community building and resilience.
For the past 3 years, Tibi Chelcea has worked on a series of embroideries on circuit boards, called Randomly Accessed Memories. This series is inspired by core computer memories from the 1950’s-1960’s, which were woven by hand by pairs of workers passing a needle with copper wire back and forth through a circuit. Unfortunately, quite often, these workers were low-paying positions occupied by women. Each day of Art-a-Thon, Tibi will invite other people to work together on embroidering a circuit boards. Mimicking the original process of paired weaving, a needle with the thread would be passed between the embroiderers through the circuit board creating a new, spontaneous, design.
The Year of the Seldom Sun is an immersive, multisensory experience that highlights an emotional journey each year as the seasons change, and the Sun travels away from my world and returns again. Everything is affected: The colors and energy; the days, nights, and light; the sights and the sounds; life, death, silence and rebirth. It is a cycle, and the 2020-2021 cycle was particularly dynamic. As we (all) endured wave upon wave of uncertainty, tense civil situations, pandemic, and isolation, I turned to writing music to process. The music came out in the form of a full length, home recorded concept album: The Year of the Seldom Sun.
I wrote the album to tell the stories that I was watching unfold around me, and embedded a host of extra sounds, clips, and special textures that provide more to dive into for listeners who want to go deeper than surface level. And while the finished product was conceptual, and flowed thematically and intentionally from start to finish, I still wanted more. I wanted this album to capture people's imaginations and engage their senses. So with the help of my colleague and friend Kelly Moore, and a handful of other local contributors, I have created and curated a physical space to extend the experience. To give visual representation to the imagery, and more storyline to the characters in the songs. To more fully immerse listeners into an environment, and to attempt to re-create that time in history the way that I saw it: from my stool looking out at the beautiful, if not inherently isolated, East Amana, Iowa.
about the artist
Not an artist, really. Not formally trained or practiced enough. Just a maker. A re-creator. For most of his life, Will Kemple-Taylor has been doing his best to mimic and capture the things that inspire him through songs, visual art, and more recently, immersive environments. When he followed his partner to Iowa 9 years ago, he left behind the mountains of Northern New Mexico, and much of the natural beauty that once fueled his creativity. But Iowa brought new inspirations. He found a creative calling working at The Iowa Children’s Museum. And that new path, along with the birth of his children and a move to the countryside, sparked something in him. A newfound urge to tell the stories around him. A need to create, and to do so in as many ways as possible.
Local punk rockers Death Kill Overdrive celebrate their record release, joined by Collidescope (Kansas City) and Greg Wheeler and The Poly Mall Cops (Des Moines).
This show will also be livestreamed!
Leo shares how he got into telling true stories about fitting in, building talent and character, and autism, as he has autism.
In person at PS1 Close; streaming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 5pm.
