Poetry Pics Bero Gallery Show Blends Words And Visuals. By Margaret Regan THE LITTLE BERO Gallery downtown aims to break down artificial barrers between art forms. During the short two years of its life, this little gallery-that-could has routinely shown cutting-edge photographs on dresses or photographs reassembled into kaleidoscopic collages or photographs filmed out of trash-can cameras. Over at the powerhouse Center for Creative Photography, curator of collections Trudy Wilner Stack has the same goal, if on a loftier scale. Witness last spring's gigantic William Christenberry Reconstruction show, which she organized, with its cavalcade of photographs, architectural models, paintings and cloth figurines of Ku Klux Klanners. So when it came time for Bero to put together its second annual Poetry Gallery, an exhibition of work in which poetry is blended with visual media, gallery co-owner Beth Wachtel turned to Wilner Stack to serve as judge. The indefatigable Wachtel, who came to Tucson two and a half years ago, knows Wilner Stack through her volunteer work at the Center. Wilner Stack agreed, taking time from her duties at the Center, where every day she handles the work of the century's greatest photographers, to judge the work of some 20 local aspiring artists/cum/poets. "I tried to follow the guidelines they had written," she says, "to evaluate the literary components' and the visual components' merits on their own, and how they strengthened each other." The quality of the 30 entries was decidedly mixed, Wilner Stack acknowledges, especially since many of the artists and/or poets were experimenting with the combination of visuals and poetry for the first time. "In a show like this, you get people who think, 'I could try this.' You have poets working with artists, usually for the first time. You can define poetry as loosely as you define images." In the end, she says, she came up with "a nice group. It's a good mix of things." Six works by five artists/poets made the final cut for the Bero component of the show. There are poems by UA student Renae Lillie contacted onto photo paper and bolted to the seat of a tall, thin chair. Poet Richard Siken collaborated with printmaker Sonja Peterson on a waffle-iron piece complete with handmade paper stained by coffee. Jack Cornelius made a big sculptural piece with words on wooden blocks that viewers can rearrange, Wachtel says, "to make their own poetry." Poet and artist Jerre Johnston, who also works at Etherton Gallery, was invited to do an installation at nearby Shane House as part of the show. This won't be the last time locals see (or read) a show of poetry plus visuals. Wachtel intends to make the Poetry Gallery an annual event at Bero. And Wilner Stack has even bigger plans for a major poetry/photography show at the Center sometime in the future. "Poetry is something I've been close to all my life," she says. "My mother is the poet Eleanor Wilner, a well-known poet. I've been working on an anthology for seven years of poetry about photography, about the interactions between images and words. We're hoping to do an exhibit in conjunction with the book. I started the project in graduate school (at Yale). My mother and I are working together as editors." The exhibit, Wilner Stack hopes, would include audiotapes of the poets reading their work, so viewers could hear the words as they look at the photos. Predictably, though several publishers are interested, they're a bit confused by the premise for the book, which would put together poets' responses to photography into a single volume. But poetry and literature in general have a lot to offer visual artists, Wilner Stack believes; a generation ago there was a closer link between the two art forms. "Now people artificially segregate the artist by medium. Artists used to be more influenced by writers. Now it's all popular culture." The Poetry Gallery continues through August 29 at Bero Gallery, 41 S. Sixth Ave., and at the Shane House, 218 S. Fourth Ave. Bero is open from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 1 to 4: 30 p.m. Friday and by appointment. The number for Bero is 792-0313. At Shane it's 884-8911.

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