VIRTUAL- 2020 Open Studios Series: Vanessa Aricco & Jackie Hedeman

Originally scheduled for April 2020, Charlotte Street Foundation’s Open Studios series is back as an online-only program series! Featuring over 15 studio residents of all practices from dance to painting, this Zoom series provides insight and reflection on how Charlotte Street Studio Residents have reacted (or not reacted) to the critical year of 2020. This first edition of 2020 Open Studios features a Q&A discussion between studio residents Vanessa Aricco and Jackie Hedeman. Also airing in this episode is a performance from studio resident Kevin Kilroy, who will be reading excerpts from his new book, The Chicago Window. This is a Q&A writers and mixed media fans will not want to miss! The Q&A streams live over Zoom on Tuesday, November 24th at 6:30 PM. Attendees will receive a Zoom link upon RSVP confirmation.
About Vanessa Aricco (@pettinellawinters on Instagram) I am a multimedia poet, incorporating music and video to expand my idea of poetry. Through this multidisciplinary approach I am constantly addressing conflict and duality, the precarious nature of life and the anxiety that arises from it. By giving the poems a sonic texture and a new vehicle for delivery, I hope to bring experimental poetry to a wider audience through live performance, video, and audio recording. Through my work I seek: – to combine music and poetry to make poetry more accessible, more immediate – for poetry to be as prevalent as music, an all-pervasive influence in our communities – to push the boundaries of music with poetry’s influence – for poetry to have an embodied visual presence – to use poetry and music as vehicles for transformation
About Jackie Hedeman (@JackieHedeman on Twitter) Begin with uncertainty. Or begin with the benefit of the doubt. In a piece I wrote on Roger Ebert, a critic whose basic human stance I admire even more than his writing, I talked about the empathy of not knowing. I keep that fact in mind as I write. What I do is a calculated advance-retreat-advance. My voice and perspective admit doubt: who am I, and why should I be trusted? Wherever I begin, I always end by dipping into my stuff, the images and questions that recur and thread throughout my nonfiction work, regardless of length or focus or purpose. My stuff is friendship. Sadness. Secrecy and slow revelation. The possibility of great delight. The hardest and most rewarding part of honing my writing practice has been honing my ability to be vulnerable and open. Open to critique and criticism, open to new revelations about myself. All of my writing asks some version of this question: “How do you find yourself, outside yourself?” I write in an attempt to answer.
About Kevin Kilroy (@kevinkilroykc on Twitter & Instagram) I move through the world collecting experiences, details, thoughts, people, language, emotions, voices, wisdom and visions. I collect and I recognize myself as a site for all this to synthesize into an ecosystem of imagination. I use the novel, the poem, the stage, and the song as a vehicle, as a window, and as a mirror of the interior life. I use my writing to stir all of this and to listen. I make room for new life forms, new worlds to be created within me, and I listen for this life to speak. And I move forward through intuition.
About Charlotte Street Foundation’s Studio Residency Program In its seventeenth year, the Studio Residency Program provides free studio and rehearsal spaces to exceptional young, emerging, and/or already accomplished artists in need of workspace in which to create and to develop their creative processes, professional practices, and peer networks. Through the program’s offerings—which include studio space, monthly meetings, presentations, studio visits, mentorships, public programs, exhibitions, and access to a multidisciplinary network of artist peers—Charlotte Street’s Studio Residency Program encourages creative production, artistic experimentation and collaboration, professional development, and community building.