Four Poets Respond is a performance piece dealing with the way objects shape our lives. Directed by Elsa Menéndez, the annual collaboration brings together a group of acclaimed bards who reflect on artwork and functional items—such as a pair of red shoes—that have personal resonance. The event takes place on Wednesday at 516 ARTS. The performers are Valerie Martínez, Lauren Camp, Jasmine Cuffee and Shelle Sánchez. If you're not familiar with these names, Martínez was the poet laureate of Sante Fe for two years, Camp hosts the poetry show "Audio Saucepan" on KSFR-FM, Cuffee is a slam champion and Sánchez is the director of education at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. This impressive lineup comes together in conjunction with Tricklock's 12th annual Revolutions International Theatre Festival.
516 ARTS

Art Preview
Exploring Our Own Backyard
516 ARTS looks to our local past

Culture Shock
Vital Growth
516 ARTS exhibition brings Puerto Rican art to ABQ

Event Horizon
An Artful Anniversary
Saturday, Oct 15: Decade Reception

Event Horizon
Stereotypes Aren't Real
Thursday, Aug 18: Artist Talk

Thursday, Aug 18: Artist Talk

Event Horizon
Workin' Women
Thursday, Mar 10: Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound

Alibi Picks
Functional Ways to Draw Inspiration
Writing the Visual Workshop

Arts Feature
Be a Crossroads
Digital projects bridge geographies, cultures and media

Culture Shock
Fashion season

Art News
ISEA, USEA, We All See Emergent Art Forms in Burque
An international symposium and its underground offshoot

Culture Shock
Last Saturday Arts Crawl
John Chervinsky's Frames of Reference is an exquisite contemplation on the interplay between scientific principles and their worldly manifestations. In one of the series' subsets, Studio Physics, the Harvard applied physics professor went to great lengths for his final photographic prints. Chervinsky set up studio still lifes, then photographed portions of them. He mailed those photos to a painting factory in China and incorporated the reproductions of his photos by anonymous artists back into the still lifes. Elements of decay (a bowl of rotten bananas half covered by a painted “before” version of the ripe fruit) exhibit the enigma of impermanence in a visually straightforward way.

Alibi Picks
Super Poets
It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's a bunch of poets in superhero costumes! But seriously, what better way to kick off the Halloween weekend than dressing up as your favorite masked man and listening to the Silver Surfer wax poetic? You may be in for just that if you attend 516 Arts’ Superheroes Poetry Contest Awards Show tonight at 7 p.m. (516 Central SW). In conjunction with the Superheroes: Icons of Good, Evil & Everything in Between show on display through January, 516 Arts staged a poetry contest and is now unveiling its five winners. The evening will be highlighted by feature poet and comic book enthusiast Gary Jackson. Local legend Hakim Bellamy will host and Nora Hickey, Nick DePascal and Bonnie Altamirano will also perform. The event is free and all attendees are encouraged to costume it up. You should go. Attending a poetry reading will make you feel a lot better about your place in society when you're puking black and orange Jell-O shots out of your nose at 3 a.m. Here is one of the winning poems by Gary Glasgow (after the jump):
SUPERNOTHING
He flies! And runs with speed no mortal can.
Unloved, because he’s strange and not from Earth
Regrets he, that he’s not of human klan
And can n’er return to the planet of his birth.
His paunch belies the strength within him still
His craggy face reflects the years of toil
A seventy year exercise of his will
An alien seeking justice on our soil.
No thanks received, no treasures offered up
The Planet’s laid him off, no sad goodbyes
Now waiting for the Greyhound bus to stop
No Lois here, no Jimmy. No surprise.
The victories of Youth have well been told
Our heroes, hopes and dreams have gotten old.

Gallery Review
Life on the Flip Side
Concurrent exhibits at 516 ARTS home in on alternative communities
The first thing you notice is a bearded man with “Hug Life” tattooed across his beer gut, standing on a homemade raft. This image, and numerous other examples of alternative living, are the focus of two summer exhibits at 516 ARTS: Across the Great Divide, a collection of photographs by Roberta Price, and Worlds Outside This One, featuring more than a dozen contributors. Across the Great Divide documents life in Southwestern communes―small, rural communities based around collective land ownership. Worlds Outside This One shows environmentally friendly and often portable methods of housing from around the world.

Alibi Picks
Cross the Divide
516 Arts (516 Central SW) will present a free panel discussion, The Construction of the Counterculture: The Role of Women & the Place of Architecture, as well as two new exhibitions—Across the Great Divide, photography by Roberta Price, and Worlds Outside This One, works by multiple international artists—all on Saturday. Panelists include Price and artist Linda Fleming, both early residents of the Libre commune, and the architect Arnold Valdez. The panel is at 2 p.m., followed by a reception for the art opening at 6 p.m. This triad is the first event of a summer-long collaboration between 516 and Alvarado Urban Farm, unCommon Ground, a series of exhibits and programming about self-sufficiency, community and visions of utopia.