Sci-fi author and former Brookdale Community College faculty member William Jon Watkins (below) makes a BCC homecoming on Tuesday night, as part of the Visiting Writers Series. Sculptor Stephen Talasnik visits November 12. (Top photo by Don Pollard)
A homecoming hero who sculpts works of imagination in prose and poetry — and a visiting visionary who spins stories out of bamboo — are among the new and returning faces on campus as Brookdale Community College continues its fall 2015 slate of special-guest Writers and Artists events.
It begins Tuesday night, when science fiction specialist/ once-and-future poet William Jon Watkins beams back to BCC (where he served on the school’s founding faculty before retiring) for a reading and discussion hosted inside the Warner Student Life Center building. A prolific author of speculative-fiction novels and stories whose work has been nominated for the Nebula Award and other major honors in that field, Watkins returned in the new millennium to writing sci-fi poetry, going on to win a prestigious Rhysling Award, and infusing his verse with a continued fascination for themes like time/space travel, astrophysics, robots and werewolves.
The author visits the Navesink room of the SLC building for a 7 p.m. appearance that’s free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served, and additional info can be had by calling (732)224-2650 or emailing [email protected].
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Covering some three acres at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York — and surviving an earthquake, a hurricane, and one of the heaviest snowfalls in the history of the Hudson Valley — the super-sized bamboo sculpture “Stream” was a significant early commission for Stephen Talasnik, the artist whose intricately mathematical works in wood and paper have subsequently found their way into the collections of NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum; the National Gallery of Art in DC, and the Pompidou in Paris.
The Philadelphia native — whose work experience includes stints as a South Jersey boardwalk artist and political cartoonist—  comes to Brookdale’s Center for the Visual Arts (CVA) Gallery Thusday evening as the latest in the Fall 2015 Visiting Artists series. Admission to the 7 p.m. artist’s-talk (sponsored by BCC’s Art Society) is free of charge, as always. Parking is in lots 1 and 2, and more information can be had by calling (732)224-2881 or emailing [email protected].
