What is your art?

I am a Poet/Graphic Designer/Publisher.  Particularly in poetry my work now deals in the concrete poetry tradition more popularly know as Visual Poetics (Vizpo).  This tradition is less about strict “meaning making” and works from an understanding that our phonetic symbols are graphic units or a visual art form themselves, and furthermore that they communicate something.  Meaning is important to my work, how meaning is constructed, valued or dismissed.  My work as a graphic designer lends itself in many important ways to what I do as a poet working in the concrete poetry tradition.  I draw my influences from graffiti and jazz from artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, Glenn Ligon, Thelonius Monk and Wilfredo Lam.

What do you appreciate about your Community?

I love the people, the nuanced sounds of Lowry Avenue, the stunning art created by our young people at Broadway and Emerson, the fall colors along Theodore Wirth Park, and the wisdom of our community elders.