(L-R) Poet Ellen Girardeau Kempler, photographer Christopher Allwine and author Barbara DeMarco-Barrett pose with Allwine’s photo “Date Night.” Both women wrote pieces with the same title.
Photo by Jeff Rovner
BY MARRIE STONE, Stu News Arts Columnist
LAGUNA BEACH, CA - Last Sunday afternoon, on the Festival of Arts (FOA) stage, a giant screen showed a pastel painting of a glass bowl filled with white eggs nestled in black and white striped sateen fabric by FOA exhibitor Marie Tippets.
”Good afternoon,” read Third Street Writer Linda Winslow from her piece entitled “Bowl of Eggs.” “I’m Martha Stewart. Coming to you live today from Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, also known as ‘Camp Cupcake.’ Well, we’ll see about that.”
Winslow was one of 16 writers who responded to 18 FOA exhibitors’ visual works. Some wrote poetry and others narrative fiction. Several, like Winslow, wrote short prose (otherwise known as flash fiction or micro-fiction, which typically doesn’t exceed a few hundred words). Inspired by more than one of art, several writers penned a few pieces. And two reacted to the same photograph.
The event was the first time the Third Street Writers partnered with the FOA for an ekphrastic exercise in creative synergy. Made possible by a grant from the FOA Foundation, the Third Street Writers created a book of all the art and readings entitled Art Inscribed. It immediately sold out. The organization donated all proceeds to The Artist Fund to help Festival artists in need.
Two well-known local writers both responded to Christopher Allwine’s photograph “Date Night.” Local poet Ellen Girardeau Kempler recalled a dangerous drive-in movie date when she was only 15 years old with an “unlicensed” boy who drank Colt 45. “It’s about freedom and sexual awakening (also, indirectly, poor choice of men),” said Kempler. “And ends with the humorous line from the movie [Young Frankenstein], “What knockers.” But in Kempler’s piece, that laugh-line is described as “now serious,” giving the poem its sinister edge.
Corona del Mar author and podcast host Barbara DeMarco-Barrett wrote about the same photograph from the point of view of the hollowed-out 1959 Chrysler Imperial that awaited its end in a junkyard. “They talk about my long lines and elegance and fancy tail lights and ‘all that chrome! You don’t find it in newer models,” wrote DeMarco-Barrett. “It’s fitting the end comes here for me at the Starview - though it’s not the end end. I hear I’ll be reincarnated. As for the drive-in, the stars may no longer visit the big screen, but they mob the sky like daisies in the spring.”
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-via Stu News Laguna