Please join us for a reception and viewing of the work, followed by introductions and short readings from the poets at 5:30, then informal discussion about the project with artist Frank Born, the poets, and curator Amanda Krugliak.

About the Painter & Poets Project: In the fall of 2014, the U-M Institute for the Humanities in collaboration with the Department of English Language and Literature launched the Painter & Poets project.

For four weeks, Brooklyn-based artist Frank Born set up studio in MLB as an institute visiting artist. Seven U-M poets were invited to participate in this unique project, each taking time out from their busy schedules to sit for Frank to paint their portraits, totaling 25-30 hours each over the course of his artist residency.

The project honors these remarkable creative people in our midst, their ideas and contributions, and the great value of poetry as a marker of human experience. It also serves to encourage the potential synergy between visual gesture and the written word.

Lastly, like the proverbial “flower on the freeway,” the painter’s open studio in MLB—surrounded by the frenetic comings and goings of campus—served as a reminder to slow down, take notice, have conversations, and engage, enriched by one another.

–Amanda Krugliak, arts curator

Born in Texas and educated at Duke University, Frank Born has made a cultural home for himself in both his home state and his adoptive cities of San Francisco and Brooklyn, New York. He is best known for his idiosyncratic, gestural paintings. His commitment to the the process of painting—the exchange between painter and subject—results in surprisingly intimate yet thoroughly modern portraits, complex yet unencumbered. He has exhibited widely and in both galleries and museums.