How a Poetry Scores Art Invitational works

I've been fielding questions about how a Poetry Scores Art Invitational works, which is fair enough, it's evolved into its own thing.

It's a silent auction. There will be 50 works of art in the space that all respond to the same long poem. Somewhere near each piece will be a bid sheet for it listing the starting bid price. In almost all cases, that's a crazy cheap $50.

You like a piece, you bid by writing your bid on the bid sheet. You really like it, you keep an eye on the bid sheet and compete - you keep bidding higher.

So, it's this Friday, Nov. 13 at The Luminary Center for the Arts (Reber at Kingshighway facing Tower Grove Park). It's listed for 6-10 p.m. We'll probably close some of the bidding for some of the pieces every hour on the hour, with the last announcement being near 9 p.m. In each case, we'll make an announcement that there are 10 or 15 minutes left to bid on a set of pieces before we close them out.

We need to close bidding in stages to make the sales logistics doable. All sales will be handled that night - cash, check, PayPal or (last resort) credit card number.

Also, if there are early bidding wars, we will want to be able to announce a winner for those pieces before the end of the night, so those who don't win know they still have some money to spend if other pieces look good. I've seen almost all of the show, and most people will want to bid on more than one of these pieces.

Like I say, all sales are final that night and people will be expected to take their new art home. I haven't seen a piece yet that isn't portable. As we are wrapping up the final set of sales about 9:30 p.m., people can start packing up their acquisitions to be out of there by 10 p.m. - and on to The Royale for the afterparty.

Proceeds from the art auction are split evenly between artist, venue and Poetry Scores.

In case you wondered, Poetry Scores is a Missouri non-profit arts organization dedicated to translating poetry into other media. The Art Invitational is one of our two annual fundraisers and the occasion for releasing our poetry score CD for the year - which is the same poem the artists responded to, set to music.

This year, we scored - and artists responded to - The Sydney Highrise Variations, by the Australian poet Les Murray.

The new Poetry Scores CD (and select archival works) will be on sale at the event. All contributing artists get a free copy (and two free drink tickets). We will be playing the new CD, and previous poetry scores, on The Luminary's excellent sound system throughout the show.

The Luminary also will run a bar (cash/tips). John Eiler of Poetry Scores will provide food (free). Senor Pique of Mexico City/Ballwin will provide homemade chips & salsa for 300 (free).

Any questions? Email Chris King at brodog [that there @ sign] hotmail.com.

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The image is John Minkoff's contribution to the show, "Transients at speed," a line from early in the poem. John is a Chicago artist who also plays electric guitar in Three Fried Men, which performs much of the score.

Here is "Transients at speed" by Three Fried Men, from the score, with John on electric guitar.

Other contributors to the score include Middle Sleep (Los Angeles), Robert Goetz, Frank Heyer, Thom Fletcher, Stefene Russell and the poet. Joining Three Fried Men here and there are Christopher Y. Voelker, Carl Pandolfi and Roger Moutenot, who produces Yo La Tengo.

Three Fried Men is a St. Louis-based indie rock band that gew out of Eleanor Roosevelt, which grew out of Enormous Richard, which was a weird contemporary of Uncle Tupelo (and Chicken Truck and Bob Reuter and The Lettuceheads and ...) in the early St. Louis indie rock scene.

RFT preview from this week.