Cultural Council's Exhibit and Poetry Reading Celebrate Creativity

Celebrate creativity by spending an afternoon of art and poetry organized by the Northwest Cultural Council from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, March 23 at the Arlington Green Executive Center, 2101 S. Arlington Heights Road, Arlington Heights. The event is free and open to the public with a reception sponsored by W. F. Wittmeyer, Ltd., of Arlington Heights.

Headlining the event is artist, poet, and award-winning author Naoko Fujimoto of Bloomingdale, a Japan native, who creates “graphic poetry,” the melding of word and image on flat paper into a “contemporary picture scroll.”

Words melded with art involve experimentation with “explosions of creativity,” Fujimoto explains. There can be scattered phrases, and ignoring of grammar and other linguistic rules. Fujimoto's poetry is sensory, and when combined with her visual art, this adds another layer of experience to the poem.

Fujimoto first writes a poem, and then “translates” it into visual art. “In my work, it's like mixing words and art in a blender,” she says.

Her poetry elicits emotions, and she adapts the traditional Japanese Emaki style of illustrated narrative art, popular for centuries in the country.

The poems are often created from her research about a “relatable life event.” For example, she researched the tsunami in Japan in 2011, and wrote about it. Her words in her visual art sometimes appear upside-down to illustrate the chaos of a scene.

In Fujimoto's creative experiments, she uses paper, such as supermarket advertisements, gift wrapping, postcards, origami, magazines and other materials rich in color and texture, and incorporates them into the graphics.

The artist was schooled at Indiana University and is the author of several chapbooks. She is widely published in poetry journals and translates her poems into Japanese.

Fujimoto will read her poetry along with six other poets: Gail Goepfert of Palatine, Jan Bottiglieri of Schaumburg, Viginia Bell of Evanston, Patrice Boyer Claeys of Chicago, Barbara Kreader Skalinder of Evanston, and Beth McDermott of New Lenox. The reading will begin at 2 p.m.

The NWCC serves the Northwest corridor, and is a non-profit organization. It supports and promotes the work of area visual artists and poets, offering a variety of programs including corporate gallery exhibitions, co-sponsored by businesses, convention and visitors' bureaus, libraries, and hospitals; art competitions to stimulate and promote artists; and poetry workshops and readings.

For more information about NWCC events, call 847-382-6922.