2018 IN-RESIDENCE: POET STEFENE RUSSELL

Recognizing an opportunity to redefine how we program the Park using an interdisciplinary approach, Laumeier launched an In Residence program in 2012 in order to bring other forms of artistic practice into the public spaces of the Park that has included archaeologists, composers, an environmental historian and a nutritionist. 

For our 2018 In Residence program, Poet Stefene Russell engaged our visitors through a number of dynamic yet thoughtful interactive programs, educational activities, readings and walking tours. Russell’s projects and curated programs activated the Park through performance, 
poetry, creative writing and sculpture. Our audience was invited to take a meditative walk with her, soak up the landscape, make a collage in response or just sit and listen to a local poet while having a cocktail with friends. Through a potpourri of programs during her tenure in 2018, Russell organized a series that animated the collection and nutured the process of experiencing art, being in nature and putting pen to paper.

BIOGRAPHY

Stefene Russell is former St. Louis Magazine’s Culture Editor, and a member of Poetry Scores, an arts collective dedicated to translating poetry into other media, including visual art, music, food, and film. She is the author of the chapbook Inferna (Intagliata Press, 2013), and The Possum Codex (Otis Nebula, 2015). She is currently working on a collection, Grammar of the Lawn, to be published by Kansas City’s Spartan Press in December of 2018. Russell was also part of Poetry in Place:The Platforms, a two-day sculpture and poetry event here at Laumeier Sculpture Park in 2011. Russell is now Editor and Advertising Coordinator at John Burroughs School.