Contributors to the anthology Jonathan Williams: The Lord of Orchards discuss their work

Mon 11/13, 7pm
Contributors to the anthology Jonathan Williams: The Lord of Orchards discuss their work

with refreshments

The new anthology Jonathan Williams: The Lord of Orchards is a collection of historic and new writings and responses to the life and work of Jonathan Williams.  Join co-editors Jeffrey Beam and Richard Owen, as well as four contributors from the book, for an evening of discussion and readings of Williams' life and work!

About the book:

Jonathan Williams’ work of more than half a century is such that no one activity or identity takes primacy over any other—he was the seminal small press publisher of The Jargon Society; a poet of considerable stature; book designer; editor; photographer; legendary correspondent; literary, art, and photography critic and collector; early collector and proselytizer of visionary folk art; cultural anthropologist and Juvenalian critic; curmudgeon; happy gardener; resolute walker; and keen and adroit raconteur and gourmand.

This book of essays, images, and shouts aims to bring new eyes and contexts to his influence and talent as poet and publisher, but also heighten appreciation for the other facets of his life and art. One might call Williams’ life a poetics of gathering, and Jonathan Williams: The Lord of Orchards a first harvest.

 

Jeffery Beam’s over 20 works include The Broken Flower and Gospel Earth (Skysill), and the song cycle Life of the Bee (with Lee Hoiby).He is poetry editor emeritus of Oyster Boy Review, a retired UNC-Chapel Hill botanical librarian, and resides in Hillsborough, NC with his husband of 37 years.

Richard Owens is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Delaware Memoranda (BlazeVOX), Embankments (Interbirth), No Class (Barque), Clutch (Vigilance Society) and Ballads (Habenicht, reprint Eth Press). His poetry has appeared in Cambridge Literary Review, Hi Zero, Poetry Wales, Shearsman, and elsewhere. He currently resides in Southern Maine.

Thorns Craven is a native of Concord, NC, and has lived in Winston-Salem since 1969. He was director of the Legal Aid Society of Northwest North Carolina for 21 years, became a certified mediator in 1992, and has practiced as a mediator since then. He served as treasurer of the Jargon Society from 1979 until the organization was dissolved in 2013. Upon dissolution the assets of the Jargon Society were transferred to the Black Mountain Museum + Arts Center.

Neal Hutcheson is an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work centers on issues of culture and heritage in transition. Honors include a Midsouth Emmy for First Language–The Race to Save Cherokee, a Midsouth Emmy nomination for Coresounders–Living from the Sea, and an Arts Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. His work has been featured on PBS, The Documentary Channel, Sundance, and History.

A native of Hillsborough, NC, Elizabeth Matheson earned her BA from Sweet Briar College and studied at the Penland School of Crafts with John Menapace.  Her work is in the collections of Duke University, Ackland Museum, and North Carolina Museum of Art, among many others. Matheson’s must recent exhibitions have spotlighted her Italian and Cuban photographs.

Tom Patterson, an independent writer, art critic, and curator, lives in Winston-Salem, NC. Through his apprenticeship with JW, he led Jargon’s Southern Visionary Folk Art Project, a three-year effort to document examples of this art in several southern states. His first curatorial project, a 20-artist show titled “Southern Visionary Folk Artists” (co-curated with Roger Manley, 1985) broke new ground in introducing this work to contemporary art audiences. Since the early 1980s his writings have appeared in art magazines including afterimage, American Ceramics, American Craft, Aperture, ARTnews, Art Papers, BOMB, and Raw Vision.

Event date: 
Monday, November 13, 2017 - 7:00pm
Event address: 
752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514