THE MIND'S EYE
at
The Schoolhouse Center


~
Thursday, August 9 at 8 p.m.
David Armstrong
Presenting
E S C A P I S T A!

An Evening with Chris Verene

Narrowland Arts is pleased to present The Mind’s Eye at The Schoolhouse Center. This summer’s residency at the Schoolhouse Center takes its form as a concentric curatorial, an episodic salon in which a group of seven participants have been invited not to perform but to invite. Each resident is asked to turn outward and enact his or her own contribution by choosing another artist to come and make an event in Provincetown. In this way a series of readings, concerts, talks, exhibitions, and other happenings will proliferate, each contextualized by the interests of the instigating participant, but realized in the performance of the guest. In practice, then, the season’s visiting artist is not an individual, but a kaleidoscopic figure shaped by elastic accidents and long-standing appreciations, the interconnections that generate what’s known as inspiration.”

On Thursday, August 9 at 8 p.m. photographer DAVID ARMSTRONG will present CHRIS VERENE who will talk about his new self titled book (Twin Palms) followed by an evening of escape art with THE GREAT VERINI.

Chris Verene is a photographer and performer who divides his time between New York, Atlanta, and Galesburg, where he has been involved with photographing his family for fourteen years. Verene is a natural storyteller who’s work is born from the real relationships with the people in his pictures. Verene also performs as his androgenous
alter ego Cheri Nevers and hosts “Self Esteem Salons” (at the Whitney last year) for models in need of a makeover and therapy, and as escape artist The Great Verini.

Perhaps the last thing you would expect from a performer who subsumes his own identity in kooky alter egos would be painfully personal photographs of the people he loves, but Verene successfully presents both, with an unmistakable interest in spectacle present
throughout.

“It is complicated to integrate this tender, moving (photographic) work with Verene’s performances as the flamboyant Cheri Nevers, the consummate showman the Great Verini or the Chris Verene who mischievously infiltrated camera clubs to expose their sleaze. Maybe, like his secret escape-artist tricks, only Verene himself could explain
what, exactly, motivates these disparate interests. Or perhaps he’s already explained it fully when he tells us, “It’s all about magic.”

Mind's Eye Schedule of Events