Wednesday, December 21, 2016

SUMMARY LETTER RE. BASIL KING

Opening night of Basil King: Between Painting and Writing, 
Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center.
Hello-
Hope this letter finds you well. I write to you as one of the “ Friends of Basil King.”
 First off, I am so glad to let you know of:
     A Basil King exhibition at the John Molloy Gallery, 49 East 78th Street, #2, NYC, opens on Saturday, February 25, 2017.  This will be the first solo exhibition of King’s work in the city in an art gallery venue.  All previous exhibitions took place in literary venues – from the Gotham BookMart to Poets House.  Plans are in progress for events during the month-long show including a screening of “Basil King: MIRAGE” and a special celebratory publication from Local Knowledge magazine. 
      Basil’s newest book of poetry – History Now from Learning to Draw/A History -- is due from Marsh Hawk Press in spring pf 2017.  It gathers new works and a few previously published pieces --Grey,  Crownstones, Rite of Passage, and For My Seventy-Fifth Birthday that were published in magazines including Talisman, Local Knowledge, Cy Gist,  Tears in the Fence, and Exquisite Corpse.
      I was very glad to host with Vyt Bakaitis,  the Kings for a salon reading and screening of “Basil King: MIRAGE” in September here in Chicago. The night before, the Kings read at Myopic Books. Thank you to Myopic organizer Larry Sawyer.

The Friends  of Basil King are delighted to celebrate two exhibitions of Basil King’s art that opened this autumn.

Basil King: Between Painting and Writing
9/2 to 12/24 in Asheville, NC
Curated by Vincent Katz and Brian Butler, at the Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, Asheville, NC. This show includes paintings using images from playing cards, texts of King’s poetry, his covers for poetry books and journals, along with a large selection of his works on paper. On 9/1,  Basil  gave a  reading  in conjunction with  a screening of the Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte film, “Basil King: MIRAGE”.  Basil gave a ‘walk-through’ talk on his work at the opening on September 2 .  On 9/ 4, Martha King and Basil King shared their experiences of  reading and editing each other’s work in a  full–to-capacity  workshop with the community.
For the exhibition, Soho Letterpress printed a limited edition broadside and the BMC Museum issued a chapbook, Basil King: Between Painting and Writing, that included work by King and curatorial statements by Butler. Katz, and Joshua Gardner.

Basil King’s Birds
10/28 to 11/19   in Laurinburg, NC   
Curated by Tom Patterson, at St. Andrews University, Laurinburg, NC.  The university was the site of a 2nd Black Mountain Festival that ran from August to the end of November. Martha and Basil King were interviewed and gave readings. The festival also included  performances by the Douglas Dunn dancers, and readings  and/or  talks by Jonathan Greene,  Lisa Jarnot, Nathanial Mackey, Tom Meyer, Peter O’Leary, and Musa Mayer among others.

Art works from the collection of Jonathan Williams were exhibited as part of the festival. 
Five of the  17        works from ” Basil King’s Birds” on exhibit
 at St. Andrews University Gallery. 
Take care.
Kimberly Lyons



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