Exploded View Performs River: Catch and Release at the Great Falls Discovery Center

Exploded View January Performance at the Pushkin in Greenfield

Exploded View October performance in Greenfield, MA

We were invited to perform at several other venues after this performance on two nights during the Greenfield Annual Word Fest. Our unique rpesetation of poetry, music, and art was moving for us to produce and for the audience, who were often emotionally engaged in our presentation.

Exploded View Debut, October of 2016

What happens when 8 talented women get together to make poetry and art together? They create a dynamic, multi-media exhibit and word performance which Explodes the View of all sorts of things: brains, car engines, hearts, houses, harassment, abuse, aging, trauma, joy. 

Lea Banks, Trish Crapo, Edite Cunha, Candace Curran, Ixchelailee (Diana Pedrosa), Elizabeth MacDuffie ,Nina Rossi and Samantha Wood are Exploded View, and they will debut their work during two special art exhibits and word performances on Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22 at 6 p.m. at 170 Main Street in Greenfield. There is no admission charge for Exploded View, which is being presented  as part of the week-long Greenfield Annual Word Festival.  (Contact Paul Richmond www.humanerrorpublishing.com for more information on GAWF)

Exploded View was conceived by Candace Curran, who showed up at Samantha Wood’s  studio one day last spring hauling a stack of old auto repair guides with exploded diagrams of engines. 

"I've fallen in love with parts manuals,” she said. “What do you think of this?"

And she proceeded to describe her idea for a dynamic group display of work produced by local writers and Artists. 

Samantha wood, writer, artist and editor, was then creating “The  Uncertainty Cube” an installation  for Eggtooth Production’s  Full Disclosure Festival which was held in Greenfield in June of this year. She liked Curran’s idea a lot, was in fact already primed for another art project before her current one was even finished. 

They put out the word, and soon the group coalesced with the eight Pioneer Valley artists who have been meeting since spring to develop their artistic view of parts relative to a whole; of how breaking something apart can explain a way of seeing the relationships between parts, whole or broken. Each artist has created a piece, or pieces of visual art and an accompanying  poetic text expressing their personal Exploded Vision. The dynamic, physical art includes sculpture, installation, collage and digital works, with static and moving parts, and links and explodes the boundaries between word and vision, personal and public, negative and positive.

Artist bios:
Lea Banks is the author of All of Me (Booksmyth Press, 2008) and forthcoming collection The Bottomland. She lives in Western Massachusetts, is the Poetry Coordinator for the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont, and founder of the Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, Mass. Banks has published in several journals including American Poetry Journal,  Connotation Press, Big River Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Slipstream, Diner Sweet,San Pedro River Review, Town Creek Poetry, The Laurel Review. She has recent work in Meat for Tea, and off the margins where she was the guest poet. She has work forthcoming in Queens of Cups.

Trish Crapo is a poet, writer, photographer and multimedia artist working in western Massachusetts. Her photography and art have been exhibited throughout New England, at the New School in New York City and in Moscow and Tula, Russia. Her book Dune Shack is a collection of images and words, made among the dunes on Cape Cod from a residency in 2013. Her chapbook Walk Through Paradise Backwards was published by Slate Roof Press in 2004. Her poetry has been published widely, including in Southern Poetry Review, Bark and Meat for Tea. She covers poetry and the arts for The Recorder.

Edite Cunhā is a writer, artist, teacher and activist. Her fiction has been published both locally and nationally and won awards and fellowships including Smith’s Spencer Prize for Excellence in Writing, AWP’s Intro Writing Award and the Tara Fellowship for short fiction. She has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, A Room of Her Own and the Disquiet Literary Program. She believes that creativity can transform the individual as well as society, and leads creative writing and multi-media art workshops for people of all ages. Cunhā has a BA from Smith College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She lives in Turners Falls, Mass.

Candace Curran is a poet and librarian by trade and the founder and producer of INTERFACE, a collaboration of word and image, exhibitions of visual original art and poetry. She has twice been named western MA Poet’s Seat laureate and has served on the panel of judges for the contest. Her book of new and collected poems, Playing in Wrecks, was published by Haley’s in 2011. 

Elizabeth MacDuffie, along with Alexandra Wagman, founded Meat for Tea: The Valley Review over a decade ago. She is a proud and enthusiastic member of the Exploded View group. She lives in a house with a blue kitchen, in which she enjoys creating epicurean delights.

Diana Pedrosa is a multi media artist who goes by the alias ixchelailee or ixchel. She combines past photography education and passion for image transfer with her tactile inclinations towards fibers and patterns. Her materials include pattern paper, electrical, scotch, & gaffer's tape, found and appropriated images, photographs & photocopies, glue and paint and most recently digital photo editing programs. She lives in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.

Nina Rossi is an artist and writer in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, who is known for her odes to abandoned shopping carts and her sculptures of garden slugs, among other diverse creations, and her ridiculously narrow Nook gallery.

Samantha Wood is a writer, artist and editor living in western Massachusetts.

 More work and other projects by these artists can be seen at:
Lea Banks: leabanks.com
Elizabeth MacDuffie: Meat for Tea: The Valley Review meatfortea.com
Diana Pedrosa: www.ixchelailee.wix.com/artwork