Kara Laurene Pernicano, multidisciplinary artist and poet-critic

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Kara Laurene Pernicano (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and poet-critic, routinely working in erasure, collage, comics, improv dictation and poetic monologue. Kara has a MFA from Queens College and a MA from the University of Cincinnati, and she is an incoming PhD student in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. She has performed for New York Theatre Workshop, Poetic Theater Productions and the Poetry Society of New York. Her work has been included in various literary magazines and gallery exhibitions, including Snapdragon, Waccamaw, The Humanities in Transition, Full Stop, the winnow magazine, ang(st), Passengers Journal, the Whitney Staff Art Show and LIC Artists’ Plaxall Gallery. She teaches at CUNY and curates a creative series Why Open Pandora’s Box on Zoom. When not writing or drawing, Kara serves as a Voice Actor for Passengers Journal and Experimental Editor for Patchwork Lit Mag. She has also served on grant panel review committees for Queens Council of the Arts and Flushing Town Hall.

TAP Work:

The TAP training has offered me a space to revel in all my different artistic passions! By concentrating my attention on teaching hybrid forms of art, literature and theatre, I discovered how challenging it can be to discern the key elements to define for new students of a particular form of art-making. Needless to say, the collaborative, cross-disciplinary space of our TAP sessions has been a dream for me because it was such a rich time to practice expressing myself freely through art, claim common terms with various artists, and co-author rituals and mantras together, all the while celebrating so many shared motifs and themes across art forms. I was able to find greater joy and empowerment in valuing our diverse and multiple talents, while personally processing my own identity crisis of belonging and fit as a poet and artist with a hybrid practice.

 

Most Memorable TAP Moment:

My TAP fellows so often came to my aid, as TAP gifted me a newfound idea of collaboration, and I embraced it, opening up to its rich potential and finding the powerful energy of a dynamic duo–whether co-teaching or co-hosting, it’s all co-facilitating! The opportunity to co-facilitate Salon #2 with my fellow poet and artist Isaiah (Ito) Gabriel Johnson was truly my most memorable TAP moment! As founder and curator of my own creative series Why Open Pandora’s Box, on Zoom since the shutdown, I could not be more grateful and blessed to enjoy the time to connect on so many levels of our own aesthetic philosophy and hold space together. (Yay! Ito and I both love the song “Eye of the Tiger”!) It was so rejuvenating as well to express shared struggles outside work on the artist’s way. 

 

Find out more about xxx here: 

 

Sample of work/ Recently Published Piece 

 

Anything additional you might want like an inspiring quote or picture

In the spirit of community, I’d like to share a comic, notebook drawing and memorable photo that celebrates shared passions with my TAP fellows. My poetry comic captures my happy dance, marching up Dorland mountain to a gorgeous sunrise, to the beat of “Eye of the Tiger.” This was drawn while I was an artist in residence at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, a true dream place and second home of love and care, where there is also a ritual spiral maze for free-spirited dancing and collaborative bulletin boards for free-flow writing. The song “Eye of the Tiger” without fail picks me up through the lows of the artist’s struggle to survive and feel understood. I’m glad to share it with Ito and to continue a long legacy of drawing memorable people’s portraits and collecting ephemera on my very own bulletin board for when I get stuck.