Fake Flyer: July 21-28, 2022
The Mission:
This one is taken verbatim from Sarah Urist Green's You Are An Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation, which I use with my students and highly recommend. This particular assignment was created by contributing artist Nathaniel Russell, and it's called "Fake Flyer." The instructions:
"The flyers you see tacked to bulletin boards and telephone poles are almost always practical, advertising events, causes, and available services. Here's your chance to create a flyer that is impractical. Loosen up, unleash your imagination, and begin to conjure all the strange and wonderful reasons why someone (or something) might want to communicate with others. Make a flyer that gives advice, shares something about your life, or promotes an imagined event."
The Submissions:
by Espy la Copa
by Captain Quillard
This weekend is our city’s annual Celtic Festival. I happen to live within the festival footprint, with one of the tented stages literally ten steps from my front door. I knew this when I bought this place, and I’m glad the festival exists—having a festival in my front yard is part of the vibrancy of living in a city. That said, there are a handful of downsides, and by the third day, the sound of a fiddle typically is enough to make me lose my mind. Slainte!
by Journal Kurtz
by Anonymous Frau Redux
by Captain Quillard
Next Week’s Assignment:
This one is inspired by singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy. Jeff is fond of writing the occasional lyric that doesn’t necessarily make sense, but just sounds good, which is how you get lyrics like “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue.” He will also pair words that aren’t normally paired, because they sound more imaginative or evocative (“a smattering of heartbeats” or “the sunlight writes on the cushions”).
For this assignment, write a poem or a song verse including either phrases that don’t make sense but sound good or words that aren’t normally paired together (or both). We’ll leave this open-ended, so you can write in whatever way you like. But, if you feel you need more structure, here’s an exercise and some background thoughts from Jeff himself that may help get you started...
