Monday, March 25, 2013

Greg English performs Wed., April 3rd at 7pm





Greg English performs an energetic show full of music variety with cover songs by the Sons of the Pioneers, Gene Autry, Eddie Arnold, John Denver, Flatt & Scruggs, Roy Rogers, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Buck Owens & Roy Clark, Ricky Skaggs and Bob Wills to mention a few. His showmanship and instrumental talent on the guitar and 5-string banjo will impress every listener. Greg ties the show together with family friendly comedy and storytelling that's sure to please all ages. Formerly with the English Brothers and the Canyon Trail Chuckwagon supper and show in New Braunfels, Greg has relocated back to the hometown Houston area to share his musical skills. Saddle up and ride on over to the Friendswood Public Library to hear this masterful entertainer! Happy Trails.


Friday, March 22, 2013

photo exhibit at FPL through April 4



PHOTOGRAPHS


Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.
Edward Steichen

All art requires courage.
Anne Tucker

I hate cameras.  They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
John Steinbeck


Friendswood Public Library is pleased to present recent photographs selected by David McClain, instructor at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University and Houston Community College Southeast Campus.

Many of the images were made in classes at these schools; others are works by established artists working in the medium of photography.  All of the photographers work in and around the greater Houston area.

The exhibit makes no effort to distinguish between the works of students and professionals.  Elliot Erwitt, winner of the International Center for Photography’s Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement and former president of Magnum photo agency, wryly noted, at 82, “I’ll always be an amateur.” It is the continuing interest in humanity – the comedy, the tragedy and the beauty of it – that makes a good photograph.  The selected photographs show an interest in using photography to help explore that strange condition known as humanity.

The Exhibit will continue through Thursday, April 4th.


David McClain, Curator



David McClain at FPL with Triptych photograph by Lance Brown


 

Saturday, March 16, 2013

poems by 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, Larry D. Thomas


Watch Texas Poet Laureate Larry D. Thomas read at FPL


Tide Pool Touch Tank
                  for Frank


The dank air
of the Maine State Aquarium
is pungent with brine
and the nostril-flaring
smell of fresh fish.
 
Little children huddle
around a tank
like primitives in a ritual.
Their heads swim
with flashbacks

of moonless, blue-black skies,
of luminous bodies
sparkling through the slats
of their cribs
beside the windows,

ever beyond the reach
of their fat, groping fingers. 
Wide-eyed, entranced
by the miracle beneath them,
they take deep breaths,

ease their hands into the black-
green holiness of seawater,
and, with the fingers of gods
trembling in the heavens,
stroke the spiny skin of stars.


(from The Lobsterman’s Dream currently in press at El Grito del Lobo Press, Fulton, MO; first published in The Texas Review)



Rattlesnake Roundup


At sunrise bands of gunless hunters
Stud the bleak, West Texas landscape,
Clutching forked sticks, wide-eyed at openings
Of cap rock dens, shoving vees

Behind the venom-bulged heads of vipers,
Bagging their catch in coarse tow sacks
For the trip to the town coliseum,
To pits teeming with fugues of fierce rattling

Where handlers press fangs against lips of jars,
Milking poison, and butchers section cuts
For deep fryers, cooking sweet, snow-white meat
For the leathery mouths of old townsfolk.


(from Amazing Grace, winner of the 2001 Texas Review Poetry Prize)



Fox Fire


After weeks of light rain
the floor of the woods
is sodden as a bog,

a patchwork of oxblood
and mustard tallow leaves
disintegrating from the thread-

like skeletons of their veins
in the black machinations
of rot, scat-scented,

shining with frog-slime, upthrust
by the shoots of mushrooms
muscling their way through the mire,

loosing old fox-stink
to slither through the mist
like warm steam.


(from The Woodlanders, Finalist, 2000 Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition)



Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, has published nineteen collections of poetry.  His most recent book-length collections are The Skin of Light (Dalton Publishing 2010) and A Murder of Crows (Virtual Artists Collective 2011).  Among the numerous prizes and awards his poetry has received are two Texas Review Poetry Prizes (2001 and 2004), the 2004 Violet Crown Award (Writers’ League of Texas), the 2003 Western Heritage Award (National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum), a Poets’ Prize nomination (West Chester University/Nicholas Roerich Museum), five Pushcart Prize nominations, a “Best of the Net” nomination, and six Spur Award Finalist citations (Western Writers of America).  His Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press 2008) was long-listed for the National Book Award.

Larry D. Thomas has also been a featured poet at a previous FPL Poetry Series event and we hope to have him back to read later this year or during the first half of 2014.


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Photography Exhibit at FPL: March 21


The Friendswood Public Library will host a photography exhibit curated by Houston artist and instructor David McClain: Photographs by students of Rice University and Houston Community College. 
 
David McClain:
  • earned his MFA in Studio Photography from School of Art Institute of Chicago.
  • has a permanent installation in collaboration with Kristy Peet entitled After Smithson (Limestone Jetty) at Lone Star College—Montgomery in Conroe Texas.
  • published 4 art books including Oleo, Hotel Chelsea, Lawyers, and New Paintings.
  • has been in numerous Group Shows from 2007 through to his latest entitled Unpremeditated Natures with Russ Havard at Gallery 1724 in the Museum District. 
 
opening reception: thursday, march 21 from 6:30 – 8:30pm: exhibit will continue through thursday, april 4 at 8:30pm
                                                                                                                     

photo by Lance Brown


Artist David McClain demonstrates his collaborative artwork entitled Box of Curiosities as part of Box 13 ArtSpace pod project at Friendswood Public Library (2011)