Positively Bob Dylan

The poetry community writerslounge.net is currently featuring Bob Dylan in their first poetry special. Registered writers can upload and publish their Dylan-related poem for free. You can post your personal appreciation in the form of a poem, just like Dylan himself did in 1962 for one of his idols, Woody Guthrie, in “Song to Woody”. Or you can submit a poem or even song lyrics that you might have written in reference to Dylan’s life or work.- Participate here!
In cooperation with writerslounge.net the best poem(s) – that’s the ones that receive the highest rating by readers – will also be published and promoted on positively-bobdylan.com.

As the Bob Dylan magazine ISIS reports in its latest issue, there will be an exhibition of original paintings and limited edition prints by Bob Dylan from 14 June 2008. The exhibition will include new, previously unseen works. It will take place at London’s Halcyon Gallery in Mayfair, one of Europe’s leading galleries for contemporary art in its 25th anniversary.
Bob Dylan’s interest in painting was probably influenced by artist Suze Rotolo, Bob’s girlfriend in the early 1960s. Examples of his early works can be found on the covers of his albums of “Self Portrait” (1970) and “Planet Waves” (1974), but only recently he agreed to a very first official exhibition at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany from October 2007 until February 2008, entitled “The Drawn Blank Series Watercolor and Gouache Paintings Exhibition”. The initial idea for that came from a book of drawings and sketches done by Dylan from 1989 to 1992, which were published under the title “Drawn Blank” by Random House in 1994. You can read the official press release by Columbia Records here, or take a look at some of the paintings on this page of the Guardian website.

The Steven Kasher Gallery in New York is currently hosting an exhibition of Fred McDarrah’s photographs from the 60’s and 70’s. Among the photos are 6 very rare original gelatin silver prints of Bob Dylan.
The vintage photographies have an average size of 8″x10″ and range in price from $3,000 to $4,000.

“Fred W. McDarrah: Artists and Writers of the 60s and 70s” celebrates the former Village Voice photographer’s 80th birthday. It is the first ever gallery exhibition surveying McDarrah’s work, and the first exhibition ever curated from his entire archive of published and never-before-seen prints.

Fred W. McDarrah was the primary photographer and picture editor at “The Village Voice” during that newspaper’s first thirty years (and he is still with The Voice as Consulting Picture Editor). His pictures were the graphic expression of the United States’ first alternative weekly as it recorded the most vibrant decades of New York City.

Besides Dylan the exhibition also shows iconic images of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Jack Kerouac, Martin Scorsese and Elvis among many others. It can be visited through January 6, 2007.

> Steven Kasher Gallery