Gemini Ink’s summer faculty member Mobi Warren and Communications Director Jennifer Herrera were featured along with Sandra Cisneros in July’s SA ArtsBeat program. The episode spotlights literary arts in San Antonio, focusing on Gemini Ink’s upcoming Summer Literary Festival and Cisneros’s Macondo Foundation. To view the program, visit SAHearts.com or watch SA ArtsBeat three times a week on TVSA (cable channel 21); Mondays, 7 pm, Tuesdays, 10:30 am and Fridays, 4 pm.
Carolina G. Flores in her Blue Star Art Complex studio. Photo by: Anisa Onofre.
Artist Carolina G. Flores recently teamed up with Gemini Ink’s Writers in Communities (WIC), to create broadsides inspired by poetry written by 7th and 8th grade students from Edward H. White Middle School. The “My Part of Town” project was funded by Rackspace, and gave students the opportunity to compose poems that depict their neighborhood. Although Flores did not work directly with the students, she has taken their poems and given them life through her bold water color illustrations.
“How I paint is more joy than anything,” Flores said. “The joy of just being alive, celebrating my family history, the beauty of the flowers … I think what my paintings do, is, make people very happy.”
Her vibrant pieces of work done in watercolor, oils, silks and ceramic are displayed at the Carolina G. Flores Studio, located in the Blue Star Art Complex.
Flores credits her middle school teacher, Ms. Brown as the person that introduced her to art.
“She was very, very much involved with my talent and I didn’t realize it was worth much, but she took so much interest in me,” Flores said.
It is no wonder that Flores’s dedication to community-based work and teaching has always been a part of her life. In fall of 2009, her first venture with WIC was a ceramics project with students from East Central Independent School District.
Flores is currently a part-time art teacher at The Winston School, a school for children with learning disabilities.
“I’ve realized that if I don’t teach, I miss it,” Flores said. “I miss communicating with young people and sharing what I know.”
Flores still makes time to paint for herself. As part of collaboration with two other artists named Carolina, 25 of Flores’s paintings were exhibited at the Centro Cultural Aztlan show, Carolina por Tres.
“I’m at a point where I want to do as many paintings and say as many things as I want to say with my canvasses,” Flores said.
– by Melinda Gonzales, Gemini Ink intern
This week beloved writer and educator, John Igo starts contributing grammar blog posts. Igo, 82, is a
San Antonio educator, writer, artist, photographer, producer, critic, and civic leader. A graduate of Trinity University, he has taught at Trinity, St. Mary’s Hall, San Antonio College, and the University of the Incarnate Word.
Igo has published 12 books on poetry, including the Third Temptation of St. John (National Society of Arts and Letters National Award), God of Gardens (Southwest Writers Conference Publication Award), and Alien (Poetry Society Foundation). In addition, he’s authored several books of prose and several produced plays.
He’s received many accolades throughout the years, including the Grothaus medallion for Distinguished Service to area libraries (the only non-librarian ever to receive it) in the 1980s, an Emmy in 1985 for his script Our Children: the Next Generation, being named Deputy Director General of the International Biographical Centre (Cambridge, England) in 1997, and having the distinct honor of being the speaker for the Advancing Equality for Women and Girls through Advocacy, Education, Philanthropy, and Research (AAUW) book review group each season for the past 54 years.
In 2007, the San Antonio Public Library honored Igo by naming a library branch after him. Since retiring from teaching grammar for 46 years and answering grammar-related questions on the radio for 20 years, Igo’s kept busy by working on a biography of Mendez A. Marks Jr, who attended Twain Junior High School and Jefferson High School, moved to New York, and joined the staff of the New Yorker.
Igo’s first post features the confusion with who and whom. Do you have a grammar query you’d like Igo to discuss? If so, submit your questions to communications@geminiink.org.
Before Joe McKinney boarded a flight to Brighton, England for the Bram Stoker Award ceremony, he discussed with WOAI’s Berit Mason, his novel Quarantined and how he discovered he wanted to pursue writing. McKinney is also a Gemini Ink faculty member, he’s slated to teach the workshop Writing Modern Horror on Saturday, April 10. Spots are still available for his workshop, sign up today before it’s too late.
Click here to listen to the interview with WOAI’s Berit Mason and Joe McKinney: Joe McKinney interview
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