'Mortice caught on fire' for Nov. 21 Art Invitational

The runaway campaign of this smart feller named Barack Obama sort of preempted any thorough promotion of our upcoming Friday, Nov. 21 Poetry Scores Art Invitational, but here is hoping that everyone else is as behind on their lives as we are and haven't planned that far ahead - even though it's now, what, ten days away.

Our hosts again this year are the good souls and working artists at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary, 3100 Sutton Blvd. in Maplewood. The event will run 6-10 p.m., with free beer partly donated by Schlafly, not that we've yet put in our resquest for that either.

All art at the invitational will be on sale in a silent auction setting, with starting bids set by the artists (and set low). Every year, this makes for amazing steals on new work by the best local artists.

Between now and the event on Friday, Nov. 21, we'll try to post up at least one of the works of art from the show every day as a teaser and reminder. This piece is "Mortice caught on fire" (2008, gouache on paper, 4" x 6") by Tony Renner, a local musician who (I gather) started painting only a year or so ago but has been going at it like a man on fire.

Little pun there on the title of his piece which, like the titles of all of the pieces in the show, is drawn verbatim from K. Curtis Lyle's great poem about 9/11, Nailed Seraphim. That's the premise behind a Poetry Scores Art Invitational: artists respond to the same poem, title their work with a scrap of language from the poem, then we hang their pieces in the space according to where in the flow of the poem the title appears.

The language Tony chose appears in part six of a seven-part poem, so will hang near the end of the show. Here is a little more context for the line:

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6. The House of God Is Also A Black Hole

Those who experience the created thing
Must also experience the uncreation

Mortice caught on fire
And got completely fulfilled
He came back home
And got completely cancelled

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Any questions about the event, email Chris King at brodog [@] hotmail.com, but of course with no brackets or spaces in the email address. For the original press release with the complete list of artists, come hither.