By Bryan Marshall
Poetry and music will highlight an interactive event at 7 p.m. Friday at the Berea Arts Council.
Poet George Ella Lyon and cellist Roberta Guthrie will present “PeaceWork: Patterns for Hearts at Peace.”
Lyon makes her living as a freelance writer and teacher in Lexington and has published 36 books for children and adults.
Guthrie played the cello with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra for 30 years before leaving in 2005 to pursue performing in smaller venues, such as small restaurants and fundraisers and presenting poetry and cello collaborations with Lyon.
The title of the program echoes the quilting bee as a community event where wo-men gather to stitch fragments of their lives together in beautiful patterns and piece-by-piece the quilt emerges.
Audience members will listen to the poetry and music and write “peace word” responses on Post-It notes that, at the close of the program, will be placed on a large quilt-bordered poster to create a community piece.
The program is sponsored by Community Acupuncture Berea (CAB).
“Peace, like healing, starts from within,” said Maureen Flannery of CAB. “That’s why I am proud that Community Acupuncture Berea is sponsoring a program in which two gifted performers collaborate in a presentation that will encourage participants to access their own creativity and to articulate their hopes and dreams for the future of our community and the world.”
Serving as background for the program will be “Quilts with a Kick,” an exhibit of about 50 contemporary art quilts created by members of the Kentucky Art Quilters.
The exhibit runs through Aug. 29 with a reception for the show scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. will Aug. 2 during the weekend of Berea’s Quilt Extravaganza.
“It’s not your ordinary quilt exhibit,” said Gwen Childs, executive director of the Berea Arts Council. “They are all art quilts, not traditional, bed-size quilts. There’s a (15-piece) collection called “Challenge Quilts” where the quilt society gives all the quilters a piece of the same fabric and challenges them to create a quilt using that fabric, along with other fabric. It’s pretty interesting to see how different they all are.”
The “PeaceWork” program is free and no advance tickets are required.
Contributions are welcome to benefit PeaceCraft, the not-for-profit shop located on Chestnut Street which has promoted peace through economic justice in Berea since 1988.
The idea behind the store is to market products made by people in low-income areas of the world in order to build economic relationships that are based on living wages and local control of their workplaces and community resources, according to the shop’s Web site, www.peacecraftinberea.org.
For details about “PeaceWork,” call the Berea Arts Council at 985-9317 or visit www.bereaartscouncil.org.
Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.
