West Brattleboro, Vt. – “The Art of Poetry,” an exhibit of paintings and poems by Lynn Martin, will grace gallery spaces at All Souls Church through the end of August. An opening reception this Saturday, July 8, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., offers visitors an opportunity to speak with Lynn about her creative process as an artist and poet, and to enjoy a table of savory and sweet refreshments.
Since 1990, Lynn’s poetry has moved readers with its direct, elegant, and no-holds-barred wordsmithing. She has published three books of poems to date: “Visible Signs of Defiance” in 1995, “Talking to the Day” in 2009, and “Birds of a Feather” in 2014. Her work has appeared in numerous poetry reviews and anthologies. Her nonfiction has also appeared a number of regional publications. In 2005, she took up painting and has not looked back since.
An article about Lynn, “The Quiet Rebel” by Becky Karush, appeared in The Brattleboro Reformer in 2011, when she was 76. It revealed several interesting facts about her life. For example: “She wishes she were a skateboarder, like the kids who jump and fly outside her Westgate apartment in West Brattleboro. She was a great ball player when she was a kid, even though she wasn’t allowed to play Little League.” She grew up in New Jersey and was the first in her mother’s family to graduate from high school, though for a while worked in a factory until she learned from a coworker that going to a state college for teachers was not very expensive. She went on to teach, specializing in kids who were blind, then she and her husband decided to adopt an Asian-American son before giving birth to a brother. They later adopted an African-American daughter to complete their family.
Forty years ago, they moved to Londonderry, where Lynn led an activist/feminist life. At 50, she decided to write poetry and prose to work out some of her deep-seated emotions, as well as to share her experiences with adoption and working with the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont. “My joy is in giving voice to people who don’t necessarily have it, because that was my story,” she says. Painting in oils, mostly in an abstract vein, has given her another outlet for sharing her rich emotional life.
Many of the poems and paintings are linked. Lynn has previously shown a painting or two in group shows, but this exhibit of twenty-two works and several poems is her first one-woman show. More information is available on Lynn’s website at http://poetlynn.com.
All Souls Church (ASC) Unitarian Universalist, a handicap-accessible building, is at 29 South St. in West Brattleboro, across from the village green. Head up the wooded driveway across from the new fire station to a large parking area. Regular gallery hours are Monday 9-12:30, Tuesday-Thursday 9-12, and Friday 8:30-12, as well as during worship services and other public events in the building. For further information, call the ASC office at (802) 254-9377.
