Special program to mark the closing of “Living Architecture” at Imago

How does an idea about community become an exhibition of sculpture? On Saturday, November 7 you are invited to a special afternoon of events marking the closing of “Living Architecture: The Materiality of Community,” the exhibition currently on display at Imago Gallery, 36 Market Street in Warren. The afternoon will start at 3 p.m. with a jazz performance by Phil Gruppuso and his long-time bandmate, John DeBossu and include a short film about featured Imago artist Anne Marie Rossi by filmmaker and Imago community member Katherine Reaves, a conversation about the exhibition and film, followed by a collaborative poetry-making experience led by poet and Imago community member Vivian Eyre. The film follows Rossi’s studio practice, revealing the experimentation, building, weaving, waxing, joining, changing direction, and discovery that are normally invisible once an artwork enters the gallery. Afterwards, Rossi will discuss how the physical qualities and behaviors of the materials that she used connect, support, protect, reveal, and strengthen one another and to embody her ideas about community, vulnerability, resilience, and belonging. Reeves will discuss the experience of translating an artist’s creative process into film: what she chose to observe, what she discovered through the camera, and how she shaped those observations into a visual story. At the close of the conversation, those who wish to stay will be invited to create a collaborative poem together with Eyre. Participants will be asked to share a single word in response to the the exhibition and the film, or something heard during the conversation. Word-by-word, individual responses will become a single collective poem—a final act of participation reflecting one of the central ideas of the exhibition--that something larger can emerge when individual parts connect. The afternoon will conclude with another live jazz performance by Gruppuso and DeBossu. Commenting on her selection of the jazz accompaniment, Rossi writes, “Jazz seems particularly suited to “Living Architecture” since each instrument retains its own voice while listening, responding, supporting, and making room for the others. What emerges is something that no single instrument could create alone—a musical expression of the ideas of connection and interdependence that run throughout the exhibition.”