SOFA is pleased to present the paintings of New York artist, former Chicagoan and MAKE visual arts editor Stacie Johnson. Head on over Saturday, February 27, 7-10pm,  to 301 E 33rd #7, Austin, TX for art, beer, and special snacks. Johnson will be in attendance!

Stacie Johnson makes paintings about the everyday items that she finds in her immediate surroundings. In her process of creating seemingly abstract works, Johnson first builds a temporary sculpture out of such items as fabric, pink Styrofoam, paper, tape, plants, wood, and string. Johnson carefully observes these weird tableaus of line and color, studies the forms and shadows, then re-creates the sculptures in paint. In the translation from sculpture to painting, Johnson concentrates on the tension between illusion and flatness, condensing the accumulated passages in the 3-dimensional forms to embody similar relationships in a flat image. The paintings allow the viewer simultaneously to believe in and recognize the means of illusion.

This is her first solo show outside of Chicago.

Danny’s Reading Series

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 7:30 sharp

Danny’s Tavern, 1951 W. Dickins, Chicago

Poetry by Travis Nichols and Sandra Lim

Sandra Lim is the author of the poetry collection Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press). She was born in Seoul, Korea, grew up in San Francisco, CA, and is the 2009-2010 poet-in-residence at Columbia College Chicago.

Travis Nichols was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. He now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in MAKE, The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, The Stranger, and the Huffington Post. Iowa, his first book of poems, is just out from Letter Machine Press, and will be shortly followed by his first novel, Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder, due out in April from Coffee House Press.

For more info, visit the facebook page

Nick Flynn’s second memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb, is a wild, dizzying ride through Flynn’s tortured past and the daunting but necessary exploration into our fears about ourselves and the world…read Patrick Haas’ full review

Two Separate Conversations: An Interview with Dave Daley and Stephen Elliott

By Caroline Picard

READ THE ISSUE 8 INTERVIEW – Now Available Online