Arts and Culture El Dorado – Page 6 – Arts and Culture El Dorado

Hellish Reverie, by Garrett Ramos

Hellish Reverie What conscience swears Is fire’s kiss is not so charming To rouse a sleeping sylvan beauty. But scruples do not falsify my eye, Which looks on hot unheavenly aurora roaring As though This thing that smears an ashen maquillage Would beautify. Garrett Ramos Salvagers, Lovers Leap, 2023, giclée print, Still from digital…

Details + Materials: Works by Claudine Granthem

Details + Materials: Works by Claudine Granthem honored the work of long-time El Dorado County resident Claudine Granthem. With a strong oeuvre that consists of painting, wood and metal sculpture, and drawings, Granthem’s work is at once architectural and deeply human. Her use of materials is lavish in its embrace; she doesn’t attempt to transform or…

Switchboard Connections: FIRELAND

Switchboard Connections – FIRE/LAND: The Exhibition During the runtime of FIRE/LAND: The Exhibition El Dorado County Poet Laureate 2021-2023, Lara Gularte, led a poetry writing workshop in ekphrasis in the Switchboard Gallery. Surrounded by the artwork from FIRE/LAND: The Exhibition poets crafted poems inspired by what was in the gallery. Lara then facilitated a reading…

ANTEPASSADOS, By Lara Gularte

ANTEPASSADOS 1 A blackbird passes above where the world moves over the horizon, to the upper air, thinness beyond breath, shifting bodies, many voices. 2 Years of lift and scrape, slip and crack, the Siskiyou mountains. My gold hunter ancestors, their prints on yellow ore, memory of gold nuggets. 3 With beating wings, they slip…

AT NIGHT IN THE FORT JONES CEMETERY, by Lara Gularte

AT NIGHT IN THE FORT JONES CEMETERY When the night doesn’t wish to be darkness, the distance that divides the living and the dead closes in. A letting go moment, and her lantern lifts her ancestors into light. Voices call from the dirt, rise into the air of the living. They are all here, gold…

My Mother’s Hands, by Carolyn Dyle

My Mother’s Hands My mother bore the burden On a cold and snowy morn, Grandma heeded the call Into her hands I was born. From her hands to my mother’s I was handed into her arms. I still remember her golden voice Singing lullabies in harmonic tones, Her hands strumming strings, Chord progressions she made…

Mothers, by Carolyn Dyle

Mothers A mother knows her child From the moment of conception, When a sacred bond is born. Bound by blood and soul, She risks her life to give new life, She surrenders herself To ensure her child will survive, She gives all of her heart and soul, Determined her child will thrive. Mothers are a…

What Do I Hear?, by Anton Nemeth

This poem was not created in the Switchboard Connections workshop, but was read during the public reading because of its thematic appropriateness. What Do I Hear? Flat blue-gray rosy clouds Collaged against yon pale sky, Their deckled edges indistinct Save for torn gaps so sharply backlit Where the too-bright sun of ending day Sneaks, peeks,…

You are not with me, save by absence, by Anton Nemeth

This poem was not created in the Switchboard Connections workshop, but was read during the public reading because of its thematic appropriateness. You are not with me, save by absence It is night here, and I’m half awake The dim light is like the pale sensation That there once was a fullness; A fulness…

Boomerang Back, by Sue McMahon

Boomerang Back Trees are colorfully painted In an abstract way Perhaps painted into the forest To supplement the burnt terrain Yellow hands Red hands Blue hands Brown hands Purple hands too Reaching down and over And up to the sky As if loved ones are searching For long ago good-byes By the boomerangs, One hand…