The first visitants
In the middle Todd Brown, founder of the Red Poppy 5 years ago
Adrian asking Riaz to play 3 Gymnopedies of Satie for the first set of poems
Poems hanging… The Genie and friend waiting….
The first set of poems of the night was selected by the audience…”, Día 266, Día 244, Día 305, Día 255,“Los Besos (old poem from 2002)…
Curators and cultural activists, Renee Baldocchi, Rene Yañez and Cheliz López
Painters Sue Matthews and Luis Arias Vera –mi padre-
Painter Tiffany Graham –and Amariluna inside her-
Draw-wings… in the middle up “UTERUS” inspired by music of Lulacruza and Bjork, in the middle down, “Les Abeilles” inspired by the last concert of Rupa & the April Fishes
Meklit, Tania, Todd & Aaron starting the “Flamenco Blues”
La Tania…
The audience…
In first row the poet Nina Serrano…
Flamenco spirit in the Art House
The Genie starts with his scratching guitar
The Genie with Adrian digital images
Meklit and audience listening The Genie
…more poems…Adrian ask Marina to choose another poem…and she weep some for future inspiration of her songs…
friends of the Art House listening...
the last poems…
Thank you for coming friends…
Sarbji in front of 2 of her new acquisitions…
Tiffany and Carlos
Thank you Todd…
Thank you beautiful Meklit -co-director of the Red Poppy Art House-
GRACIAS mis adoradas Tania y Anais
Thanks to all Red Poppy Staff and volunteers, Diane Rea, Kim Mondelli, Aimee Ewell, Christina Johnson,
y Gracias a todos los amigos-lectores que me ayudaron en esta primera etapa de la antologia del POEMA DEL DIA: Tania, Nina, Chelis, Silvina, Fidel, Verita y Maria.
…and Todd Brown wrote this for the catalog….
ADRIAN ARIAS
I have known Adrian Arias now for more than half a decade, and it is easy for me to say that that I have met few individuals who live so fully as an artist as he. Many practice an artistic craft. There are few who live by it. But there are even fewer who live as if artful craft were a manner of being, permeating all aspects of one’s movement and thought. Adrian Arias is such an artist-person; there is no separation. Poet, videographer, performance artist, innovator of installations, and a talent of pen and brush, Adrian moves between mediums as if tied to a giant kite of imagination. As both friend and colleague, I have watched time and time again the movement of Adrian’s creative imaginative power. It begins with an object, a room, a word, a sound, a fruit, a fillet of sole, and departs, shape-shifting into one transformation upon another. Amidst conversations at a table he will utilize all manner of random objects at hand to forge some kind of momentary creation. He seems inwardly compelled to create and create, no matter where he is.
It is with this intimate knowledge that I view Adrian Arias’s present body of drawings. No, I am not an objective viewer (is anyone?). I see the mind of the artist that I know, in motion. One form morphs into another, and another, always present; the sentiment of some desire lingering. This is Adrian, the artist, his work – an endless and boundless journey of desire. Everything is a testimony to this journey, it’s illusion, it’s dreamlike joy, and its shadowy secrets. Of the drawings, I know many were sketched in the midst of other creative happenings; flamenco classes, tiny concerts in tiny places, sitting in corners, observing and translating the energy of his experience into visual form.
I believe that, in the mind of Adrian Arias, any moment is a potential point of departure, of one world into another. This is what I see in his drawings, so characteristic of his manner of being in the world. I have the impression of a bird caught continually in its first moment of flight.
Todd T. Brown
November 12, 2007
