Artists Lovers: Exploring the Muse

 

 

Carol Beane is a Washington, D.C.-based poet/artist. She was awarded the 24th Larry Neal Poetry prize for Poetry (funded by the DC Commission for the Arts+Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts), and she received the 2009 National Museum of Women in the Arts Library Fellows Book Arts award for the streets of used to be, done with artist Renée Stout. Beane, collaborating with Michael B. Platt, also has created artists’ books and broadsides of poetry and images widely exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, most recently in Australia.
 
Michael Platt’s imagery has centered on the transformation of the human spirit that occurs when it confronts imagined or actual events and circumstances. Using the female figure, he creates images intended to express traces of the human spirit, often inspired by spaces with a history and the presence of things left behind. Empty spaces are as much storytellers as those filled with living. Exploring the visual possibilities of such circumstances, Platt has addressed issues of slavery, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the levees, waiting, searching for home; and celebration.