Beauty, Soul, and Regeneration: poetry reading and art opening September 16, 2006

Public Reception, Spoken Word & Open Mic.

Saturday, September 16th, 3 to 10 pm

Place: 859 West Hedding, San Jose , CA 95126
Theme: Beauty, Soul and Regeneration"
Artists: Bea Garth, Elizabeth Parashis
Poets: Liz Henry and Bea Garth

Art Viewing begins at 3:00 PM
Potluck/Barbecue 5:00 PM
Featured Reading at 7:00 PM with Open Mic. following

Artist Elizabeth Parashis' expressive figurative artwork is passionately yet sensitively charged. Her work focuses on the human body and how it communicates. As she says, "Creativity is so close to the self that while I'm painting a body, I become that body, I can feel the curves and bends of that body. I'm transported out of my own flesh and bones and I come away energized and somehow changed."
Parashis has had her work reviewed in Artweek and has shown in such diverse places as the San Jose Art League, PAN, Wine Galleria, Arash Gallery, Gold Horse Gallery, Expo and the Carnegie Library. She currently hosts Thursday Gig, a monthly exhibit of art and spoken word in Los Gatos.
Ceramic artist, poet and arts organizer Bea Garth's ceramic sculpture often explores the tension between the idyllic, the erotic and alienation in a distinctly lyrical ancient/modern style. Her work focuses on both slab-built geometric and coil built forms which she then carves and/or paints narrative scenes, as well as more figurative, coil-built sculpture.
Garth has shown her artwork in such diverse places as Del Mano Gallery in Los Angeles and Gardens of Art in Bellingham, Washington as well as more locally at the San Jose Art Leagueand the Phantom Gallery with PAN and more recently at the Thursday Gig. She has also illustrated covers for small press magazines such as Caesura and Writing For Our Lives.

Garth's poetry explores nature and the human condition, often with a mythic and/or political twist. She has had poems published in a variety of small press publications such as Coyote's Dance, Poetry USA, Downtown Magazine, Caesura, and Women's Struggles/Women's Visions. She is currently working on a manuscript called Plutonian Idylls.

Liz Henry's poetry often gravitates toward extremes of form, exploring the juxtaposed layers, broken grammar, repetition, lists, multiple registers and languages and cyclical structure possible in a long poem; or the flash of image and emotion in very short poems.

Henry has published poems, translations, and essays in Poetry Flash, Xantippe, Parthenon West, Strange Horizons, other, Two Lines, Cipactli, Lodestar Quarterly, & Literary Mama.