About Unit One
Climbing PoeTree
Guests-in-Residence 1/27-1/31
Guests-in-Residence 1/27/08 – 1/31/08
Poets, performers, print-makers, dancers, educators, bookmakers, muralists, designers, and new media artists, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, will be In-Residence at Unit One/Allen Hall 1/27-1/31. They will be performing, speaking, and/or leading workshops each night of their residency. All events take place in the South Rec Room of Allen Hall, 1005 W. Gregory, Urbana.
Schedule:
Sunday, January 27
7pm - Opening Program: ART is our WEAPON,
our MEDICINE, our VOICE, our VISION
Climbing PoeTree will blend their soul-stirring,
fist-raising spoken word performance with a slide-show
presentation inspired by their career as arts activists.
Audience participants will have an opportunity to contribute
their personal manifestos to S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D., a growing
tapestry of Stories, Testimonies, Intentions, Truths,
Confessions, Healing, Expressions, and Dreams that Alixa and
Naima have collected and stitched together from close to 3,000
individuals nationwide since the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Monday, January 28
7pm – Bookmaking Workshop
In this hands-on workshop, participants will
create their own hardcover journals from salvaged and
recycled materials. Alixa and Naima will show examples of
hand-bound books they have created and talk a little about their
experiences as arts educators, creating curriculum for
at-risk youth and children of incarcerated parents using
book making as a tool for healing.
Tuesday, January 29
7pm - Writing Workshop: Planting PoeTree
This workshop will seed poems rooted in our
experiences that bear the fruit of our imaginations. Alixa and
Naima will take participants on a sensory journey that
stimulates memory and activates imagery, and will share some
secrets about writing and performing compelling poetry.
Wednesday, January 30
7pm – Stencil Graffiti
An introduction to street art techniques such
as stenciling, wheat pasting, and spray paint, this workshop
will create a collaborative mural on plywood.
Thursday, January 31
12pm - Poetry is Not a Luxury: a lunch date with Climbing
PoeTree
(at La Casa Cultural Latina, 1203 W.
Nevada, U)
7pm - Fashion Statement: Silk-Screening and
Stenciling Clothing
Bring blank t-shirts, hoodies, and any article of
clothing that needs new life! We will be silk-screening
(using screens brought by Alixa and Naima from their clothing
line) and stenciling (using stencils made in Wednesday’s
workshop) on any fabric you bring to the party. This final day
will be dedicated to finishing the mural and sharing work
from the week, in addition to freshening up your wardrobe!
About Climbing PoeTree:
With roots in Haiti and Colombia, Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn
and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission to
overcome destruction with creativity. In five self-organized spoken word
tours, Climbing PoeTree has rocked 500 mikes and counting from Oakland
to Atlanta, South Africa to Cuba with artists such as Amiri Baraka,
Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Danny Glover, The Last Poets, and Dead
Prez. They have led workshops in institutions from Cornell University to
Riker's Island. And they have painted murals on walls from the Bronx to
Santiago, Toronto to Jamaica. Armed with an arsenal of artistry,
Climbing PoeTree is a queer-feminist soul-sister co-conspiracy of
acrobatic poets who moonlight as street artists and infiltrate public
schools and prisons with infectious ideas of how people can shape their
own destinies.