Program Description
Details
To celebrate National Poetry Month and Poem in Your Pocket Day, join us on Zoom for a live poetry reading and discussion by poet Danny Shot and artist Mara Torres Gonzalez. Shot and Gonzalez both recently partnered with the non-profit Art in Common Places to create the collaborative broadside ‘Jump’. Art In Common Places is a local Sarasota non-profit organization whose goal is to put art in public places so that people can enjoy it in their everyday lives. Sarasota artist Mara Torres Gonzalez, a Puerto Rican transplant from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and Hoboken poet Danny Shot, a first generation American and child of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, chose “resilience” as their theme for their project ‘Jump’. They will present a live poetry reading of Shot’s poem and a discussion of the collaborative process that led to the creation of the broadside ‘Jump’. Find more about ‘Jump’ and Art in Common Places here:
https://www.artincommonplaces.com/
Danny Shot’s WORKS was published in 2018 by (CavanKerry Press). Danny is currently an Associate Editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online. He was featured on the television show State of the Arts, NJ in July 2018. His play Roll the Dice, co-written with Lawrence Kelly was performed at the NYC Theater Summerfest in September 2018. He spent over 30 years as a NYC public high school teacher, serving in the South Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn. Danny lives in Hoboken, NJ where he is poet-in-residence of the Hoboken Museum. He was longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982 in New Brunswick, NJ. Born in the Bronx and raised in Dumont, NJ by German Jewish refugees, Danny graduated Rutgers College in 1980 with a B.A. in English and earned his Masters Degree from Montclair sometime in the 90s. Shot’s poetry has appeared in: bum rush the page (Def Poetry Jam) Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Henry Holt), The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth) and NYC From the Inside (Blue Light) among other anthologies and numerous journals. Check out his website: https://dannyshot.com/
Mara Torres González is an artist born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, currently living in Sarasota, Florida. Mara has expressed her creativity since her early childhood. She started taking art classes at the age of four at ‘Liga de Arte de San Juan’ in Puerto Rico where, as the youngest of the group, one of her paintings was selected for a group exhibition. She continued the journey through all of her childhood and had artist Betsy Padín as her mentor, being transcendental in her artistic formation. After graduating from high school in 1997 with an Art Honor Award, Mara continued to acquire formal art studies at the School of Plastic Arts and Design of Puerto Rico where she studied with Artist Professors Rafael Rivera Rosa, Carlos Marcial, Luis Felipe López, Julio Suárez, Charles Juhasz, Elizam Escobar, amongst others. She graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in painting.
Since then she has lived through art in various ways, as an artist and as an event designer. Some highlights of her event designer career include a partnership in 2017 with celebrity event designer Preston Bailey. In this event they received people from 12 countries including Malaysia, Nigeria, SriLanka, UK, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador and USA. Mara also designed the wedding of NBA player from Dallas Mavericks, José Juan Barea with Miss Universe Puerto Rico Viviana Ortiz. After a very successful 18+ year career as an event and floral designer, Mara has returned to her roots.
“From nature to social controversy, I get inspired by anything my eye catches. For me art is not only a painting, it is the channel through which I express myself and my feelings.” Mara Torres González is currently working on acrylic, encaustic, photography, resin, alcohol ink, mixed media and acrylic pour. Her work is currently in galleries and private collections across Puerto Rico, México, London and the United States.
In 2020, M A R A opened her own art studio + gallery in Sarasota, Florida. At the studio there are different workshop opportunities including acrylic pour, abstract art, encaustic and others. She strongly believes in the power of community, opening the doors to contribute with other artists in the area. At the gallery she showcases her work, as well as the work of other modern contemporary artists.
**Art in Common Places**
Cynthia Burnell, Leslie Butterfield and Teresa Carson founded Art in Common Places because they believe art belongs to everyone. The program’s primary mission is to put art in public places—such as Laundromats, public housing, car washes, medical offices—so people can enjoy it in their everyday lives. The secondary mission is to facilitate live “collaborative conversations” between visual artists and poets to produce works of art that combine these talents. Art in Common Places will celebrate the centennial of Sarasota County by creating four broadsides focused on subjects related to the history of Sarasota and by offering presentations based on those broadsides in collaboration with Selby Library.