Ken Sanders Rare Books - Press Release

Start Date: 04/09/08

BLOOD, FERTILITY & MAGIC: An Evening of the Sacred, the Primal, the Belly

Ken Sanders Rare Books is pleased to announce Blood, Fertility & Magic: An Evening of the Sacred, the Primal, the Belly, a reading and gallery exhibit by poets Melissa Bond and Sara Caldiero-Oertli, photographer Cat Palmer, and artist Kindra Fehr on Friday, May 9th at 8:00 p.m. at our downtown bookstore (268 South 200 East). Artwork and books by the performers will be available for purchase at the event. The art portion of this event will remain on display until May 23rd.This event is free and open to the public.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to have you or your partner's body become a magic trick, hat between the legs, conjuring a human? Motherhood develops a fierce language of blood under the skin. The wolf comes out and mother teeth form. Join four of Salt Lake City's finest artists (two poets, two visual artists) as they explore this world aquatic. It will be an evening of searing poetry, performance, and visual beauty devoted to the blood and magic of fertility. All four artists are conjurers. They are burgeoning. All four have shimmy in the hips. All four will be pulling magic out of their hats.

Born in Fairfax, California and raised in California’s Bay Area, Melissa Bond began her writing life by scribbling disaffected teenage poems on the backs of café napkins in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury. Bond attended St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico for two years, then moved to Salt Lake City in ’95 to complete her BA in English at the University of Utah. Bond founded Salt Lake’s first Poetry Slam and ran it single-handedly for eight years. Since that time, she’s formed two guerilla poetry groups, written for magazines throughout the Salt Lake valley, written and produced a series of soliloquies about a demented Appalachian family, and performed a section of the Vagina Monologues at Kingsbury Hall. Bond is the recipient of the 2002 Mayor’s Artist Award for the Literary Arts and City Weekly’s Best Poet in Motion 2006. Four months after Hurricane Katrina, she and two other artists went to New Orleans to help clean and tear down houses. While there, the three of them photographed and interviewed residents and created the New Orleans Project, a multi-media exhibit that has been shown all over Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Bond has performed her poetry throughout Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, Asheville, N.C. and Austin, TX. Her first book of poems, Hush, was published by Elik Press. Bond now lives a stone’s throw from Trolley Square with her husband, two cats and their baby on the way.

Sara Caldiero-Oertli regularly performs at the Utah Arts Festival and was a featured poet at the 50th Anniversary Performance of Howl at the Great Salt Lake Book Festival. She has also been featured in The Dark Arts Festival, The Orbit Café, City Art, and the Fandango in Bluff, Utah. She ran the Higher Grounds Poetry Series in Orem for two years, and is an Alumnus from the University of Utah. She has been published in Touchstones and City Art Literary Magazines. Last year, she left her technical career to devote her energies to writing and teaching poetry. Currently, she is engaged in the ultimate creative act - producing a new life.

Kindra Fehr spent the majority of her pre-mommy life painting, traveling, and working in a variety of seemingly unrelated jobs. These included: contact lens technician, flight attendant, bookseller at Golden Braid Books, waitress, or in what seems to have become a career, the teaching of art - specifically to children. She began painting at age 15 under the direction of Bonnie Posselli, Dan Baxter, and Ken Baxter. She earned a BFA in drawing/painting from the University of Utah in 1990, has studied at the Lacoste School of the Arts in France and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. At what the medical field calls “advanced maternal age” (we won't say how advanced!) she became a MOM and a student of her daughter, Aria Hancock. Currently at an even more “advanced maternal age” she is expecting her second child. In her current incarnation, Kindra paints out of her studio in Sugarhouse, teaches art at the Montessori Community School as well as the Salt Lake Art Center.

Cat Palmer was born and raised in Orange County, California. Her passion for photography came from her grandparents who had a small black and white dark room in their house. Women are Palmer's main subjects because to her they have such beauty and strength. Palmer was an invited artist to the Utah Arts Festival in 2007. In September 2007, City Weekly awarded her their Best Photographer award. She is the curator for the Women's Art Center and has taught classes there. Several magazines and newspapers throughout have run articles on her art including: Salt Lake Tribune; Standard Examiner; Go!; Deseret Morning News; The Chronicle; City Weekly; SLUG Magazine; and Park City TV. Palmer has shown her work at numerous venues throughout Salt Lake City including: the University of Utah Women’s Week, Utah Arts Festival, the Tin Angel Cafe, SLUG hq, Kayo Gallery, Caffe Niche, Broadway Theater, the Women's Art Center, Mony ty's House, Poor Yorick, Stoneground, and the Unknown Gallery.

For further information, contact:
Ken Sanders Rare Books
268 South 200 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
(801) 521-3819

Kill Date: 10/18/07