Hey Charlotte: Blumenthal Wants YOU to Participate in “Of Earth and Sky”
July 17, 2024 / Blog
This fall, words by Charlotteans of all ages will be popping up around the city during the Charlotte International Arts Festival. They will be part of the public art project, “Of Earth and Sky,” which features snippets of original poetry composed by local writers. The concept comes from UK artist Luke Jerram and originally debuted in Gloucester, England in 2020.
In 2021, Blumenthal Arts brought it to the U.S. for its inaugural American presentation and it captured the imagination and hearts of local Charlotteans.
“There are still vestiges of those original installations lingering around Uptown,” says Project Leader Amy Carleton, who oversees this year’s “Of Earth and Sky.”
Words appeared in a variety of forms and locations last time, from murals and storefront windows to parks and even the front steps of The Mint Museum. This time around, poetry installations will be featured in dozens of locations, including Ballantyne’s Backyard, where many of the festival attractions will be centered, and at Blume Studios’ new immersive experience, “Space Explorers: The Infinite.”
The actual words submitted by local poets will help determine how and where works are displayed, says Carleton, an educator and writer, who splits her time between Boston, where she teaches at MIT, and Charlotte, where she serves as an arts correspondent for The Charlotte Observer.
(Blumenthal Arts' Director of Artistic Experiences Bree Stallings installing a selected submission from “Of Earth and Sky" in 2021)
She will work with a team of local writers and artists to curate excerpts from about 25 of the submitted poems and transform them into public art installations. But every submission and participant will receive recognition during the festival, says Carleton, who also recently collaborated with Blumenthal Arts to launch the inaugural “Black Notes Project” (co-founded with her partner Michael Kitchen).
Current plans for “Of Earth and Sky” include a dedicated Instagram page to highlight each original poetry submission in a “poem-a-day” format.
“That's also a way of creating a digital archive that really honors the time that folks have taken to compose their thoughts in poetic form and submit them,” she says.
“We want eyes to be on them and we want this to be something that isn't just, you know, experienced in IRL (in real life)... through the poems or portions of poems that are selected for the installations.”
(“Of Earth and Sky” poetry installation from 2021)
No Experience Necessary
Part of the beauty behind “Of Earth and Sky” is that it comes directly from the community, featuring the words of people of diverse ages, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences.
And there’s still time to get involved! The deadline for submissions is August 1.
“I truly believe that everyone is a creative,” Carleton says. “Everyone's an artist. Everyone's a writer. Everyone has ideas and thoughts to express and so we want to encourage everyone to submit.”
A dedicated web portal for poetry submissions is available at ofearthandskyclt.com. (Read on for more details on this year’s theme, tips for new writers, and info on an upcoming free workshop!)
There’s often a misconception, Carleton says, that poetry has to be high art or difficult to understand. But there are many examples of wonderful poets who deal with the everyday.
(“Of Earth and Sky” poetry installation from 2021)
One of her favorite works, “Theme for English B,” by Langston Hughes is about a young Black man tackling an English writing assignment and how he discovers the best way to write is by drawing from his own experience and what he already knows. Another favorite writer, she says, is Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
“You read his words [from] half a century ago but it's still the same things that we think about today as individuals,” Carleton says, including topics like love, work, food and family.
Workshops & Tips for Writers
As part of this year’s project, Blumenthal has hosted a series of workshops to help writers of all experience levels get some practice and inspiration for joining the project, led by a slate of outstanding local writers and educators. Workshop leaders have included accomplished journalist and Central Piedmont Community College English professor Sarah Gallucci Hosseini, Charlotte’s Inaugural Poet Laureate Jay Ward and recently announced first Youth Poet Laureate Vanessa Hunter.
Workshops have taken place in diverse locations around Charlotte, including Woodlawn Community Fellowship in Madison Park, Canteen at Camp North End, and Lorien Academy of the Arts in West Charlotte.
Making poetry as accessible as possible is the main goal of the workshops, says Hosseini, who hosted two events this summer.
She says people are often intimidated by the idea of poetry but that if we lean into our five senses, our stories and experiences, that’s the best place to get started.
“You already have all the tools that you need,” she says. “You don't need to know how to write a haiku or a sonnet or have the format, as long as you can just feel and write from your feelings first… the meaning of it is not your business yet, we figure that out later.”
She says seeing people open up, being vulnerable, and sharing in a communal setting has been a highlight of the workshops for her.
“It’s always the most beautiful thing to me… when we can use whatever our stories have been, our past,” she says.
“Not everyone has a perfect path and we use that to write really raw and authentically. It creates what I call initially, like, this beautiful, heaping, hot mess that turns into the gold.”
(“Of Earth and Sky” poetry installation from 2021)
A final workshop is scheduled for July 24 from 6 - 7:30pm at The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. It will feature Jordan Bailey and youth poet laureate Vanessa Hunter. The workshop will be followed by an all ages dance party with DJ Mina Marie. This event is FREE and open to the public. To register, CLICK HERE!
There’s also a “pure joy” in having one’s own words published, says Hosseini, whose work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, The Washington Post and CNN. She’s excited for local writers to experience that feeling.
Not only do you get to see your own creation in a public format, she says, “you know that those words are going to be looked at by someone who needed to hear those words or see those words that day and you don't know what you … have provided that person in their time of need.”
It’s something that she has experienced herself, she says, recalling healing words she saw on uptown Charlotte walls while she was navigating the pain of going through a divorce.
“Space:” this year’s poetry theme
This year’s suggested poetry theme is “Space,” a nod toward Blumenthal’s new immersive experience “The Infinite,” which opens September 20. That event features 360° cinematic footage from the International Space Station.
The theme also complements artist Luke Jerram’s other well-known public art installation, “Gaia,” a large, revolving replica of planet earth that will make an encore appearance during the festival onsite at Blume Studios. (Note: Jerram will also visit Charlotte for the first time during this year’s festival!)
(Artist Luke Jerram's GAIA on display in Blume Studios, future home to Space Explorers: The Infinite)
But Carleton says “space” can be interpreted broadly and is not limited to the night sky and intergalactic exploration.
It can refer to setting boundaries, she says, as when a character in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” asserts that “fences make good neighbors,” or the need for personal space in romantic relationships as in Ariana Grande’s song, “NASA.” It can also relate to notions of resistance and holding space as in Langston Hughes words “this is my space / I am not movin” from “The Sweet Flypaper of Life.” Or it could refer to creating space internally for creativity to flourish, as in the words of poet Audre Lord that “each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling.”
Carleton hopes the theme will help inspire writers to explore the meaning of space to them but it’s not intended to be limiting.
What’s the inspiration behind Blumenthal’s public poetry project?
Blumenthal Arts brought back this project especially because it opens doors to the local community to be part of the creative process.
“With many of our communal projects that we have presented in the past during the festival, we really wanted to create opportunities for budding, green creatives to participate,” says Bree Stallings, Blumenthal’s Director of Artistic Experiences. “This way, not just our international touring artists and our rockstar, established mid-career artists like the [Blumenthal] Fellows and Cultural Stages performers can shine, but everyone can feel a small piece of ownership and representation in this festival. From professional writers to first-time-workshop-goers alike, their writing may be chosen for installation to literally decorate our large festival landscape with poetry.
(“Of Earth and Sky” poetry installation from 2021)
“In 2021, when we originally presented ‘Of Earth and Sky,’ most of the work was centered around the pandemic and the themes of loneliness, scarcity, and hanging onto fragile hope were very present. I am very excited to see this new crop of submissions and how they represent our larger community’s thought patterns changing as we’ve continued to grow and prevail through hard times.”
For Carleton, this project is one more example of the “innovative spirit” Blumenthal brings to the community.
“We are at a moment in time where I think there are so many things that are just constantly competing for our attention,” she says.
Finding a way to help people linger a bit, reflect and add some stillness and contemplation to their lives is “a beautiful thing.”
Final Poetry Workshop:
Wednesday, July 24 @ 6pm
Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture
Submission Deadline for Of Earth and Sky: Thursday, August 1.