The fourth annual TRIPOD arts and music celebration – held in conjunction with the monthly Back Door Coffeehouse – will bring a Grammy-winning songwriting duo, a gifted writer and a talented artist to University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg on Nov. 2-3.
TRIPOD, which offers Saturday classes from the four featured artists, will include the regular Back Door Coffeehouse performances from musical guests The Don Juans (Don Henry and Jon Vezner) and writer Sharon Gerald. Artist Janet Gorzengo of the University of Southern Mississippi will have some of her work on display.
Doors will open at 7 p.m. Friday at University Baptist Church, 1200 Arlington Loop, with the performances to begin at 7:30 p.m. Admission is by donation only, and childcare is provided. Coffee, soft drinks and baked goods are complimentary.
The four featured guests will conduct Saturday seminars for $40 a session including lunch. The sessions will include "Songwriting and Guitar Techniques" with Vezner and Henry each doing morning and afternoon seminars, "Creative Writing" with Gerald and "Adventures in Drawing" with Gorzegno. Sessions by Gerald and Gorzegno are all day.
More information and registration are online at ubchm.org. Class sizes are limited.
Back Door Coffeehouse manager David Walker said registration for the Saturday seminars is important.
“The big thing is we are trying to get people to register online,” he said. “The way to do it is to go through the church’s website, but it is tedious.”
Henry and Vezner are the Nashville songwriting duo that wrote the 1990 “Where’ve You Been.” The song – sung by Vezner’s wife, Kathy Mattea – was the first song to win all major music awards: Grammy, Academy of Country Music, Country Music Awards and the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International award.
Walker said Henry is his connection to the Don Juans.
“Don is a member of the Waymores with Tom Paxton and Sally Barris,” he said. “We had the Waymores at the Coffeehouse, and I thought about getting (Henry) by himself. Then everybody was saying that I need to the Don Juans because they are so good together.”
In the nearly 25 years since “Where’ve You Been,” Henry and Vezner have performed in venues from the Bottom Line in New York City to the Bluebird Café in Nashville, sharing stages with artists as diverse as Joey Ramone, John Hartford, Michael Johnson and David Crosby.
Their songs have been recorded by a multitude of artists including Janis Ian, Ray Charles, John Mellencamp and Miranda Lambert. Working as a duo, the Don Juans bring an impressive array of songs, experience and gifted musicianship.
Gerald is a poet and a teacher living in Hattiesburg. A native of Brookhaven, she teaches English at Hinds Community College. She studied Creative Writing-Poetry at Oklahoma State University, and graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and Warren Central High School.
Gerald describes herself in “a love/hate relationship with caffeine. I have an unhealthy obsession with gadgetry and love cameras best of all gadgets.”
She said she does not have a green thumb.
“Every year I plant tomatoes only to eventually abandon them to live or die by their own devices,” Gerald said. “I have created and abandoned more blogs than some people ever read, but I am now maintaining a long-term commitment to www.writerlyhaphazardry.net.”
Gerald’s collection of poetry, “Thin is the Kingdom,” is now available through Pinyon Press of Grand Junction, Colo. Thin's Facebook page is www.facebook.com/pages/Thin-is-the-Kingdom/235378453172808.
Gorzegno, professor of Drawing & Painting and Foundations, teaches all levels of drawing and painting for the Department of Art and Design, and is a long-standing member of The USM Museum of Art Exhibitions Committee. She has exhibited her paintings nationally and internationally, in solo and group shows, and has traveled nationally and abroad to pursue her creative research.
Awards for Gorzegno include a 2015 Heliker-LaHotan Fellowship, a 2015 Mississippi Arts Commission Visual Arts Fellowship, residency awards at the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar France, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.
Gorzegno has also studied Russian Byzantine Icon painting in the medium of egg tempera through the Prosopon School of Iconology, and fresco painting at the Accademia Caerite in Ceri (Rome, Italy), both with the support of faculty research grants from The University of Southern Mississippi.
Gorzegno, who grew up in New Jersey, was inspired at an early age by her grandmother, who took up painting in her later years. She attended Drew University, where she received her bachelor of arts in Studio Art, and then moved to New York City to continue her art studies at The New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture.
She received her master of fine arts in Painting from Yale University. Her current gallery affiliation is Bowery Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, where she will be having her next solo exhibition.
