Artists Personal Exchange

This short video, in which I make a cameo, celebrates Apex, or Artists Personal Exchange. Since about 2018, I’ve been a regular participant in Apex, led by Marko Coady, in Redmond, Washington. It’s a monthly salon, where artists of all sorts gather to share whatever we’re working on. This could be photography, painting, poetry, ceramics, collage, music, or any of dozens more obscure and mainstream arts. We have one rule—no criticism. The group has a Facebook page, and attendance at meetings has ranged from 20 to 35 artists each month. In pandemic times, we’ve met via Zoom, which has enabled the easy screen-sharing of photography, video, and art, instead of schlepping canvases or sometimes delicate creations to SoulFood Coffeehouse, our meeting location before the lockdown (where I have also run SoulFood Poetry Night every month since 2006). At each meeting I’ve been amazed at the creativity and versatility of all of Apex’s talented participants.

One highlight of the group’s history, in December of 2019, was “It’s a Wonderful Artist’s Life,” a multimedia show of art and performance at Second Story Repertory theater in Redmond, where I performed the opening-act poem, “Death Rattle: One Day We Too Will Follow the Light,” with Nicole Renée La Follette and Rose Ramm. You can see a few videos from this evening on YouTube. I’m grateful for the varied artistic community that Apex nurtures.