Invited as poet and member of the Public Address Collective to write poems that captured the essence of artwork shown by 16 Public Address artists in the exhibit DesEscondido | No longer Hidden at The California Center for the Arts Museum in Escondido, CA.  Resulting poems were informed by one-on-one conversations, group meetings, emails, and telephone as the artists  prepared and organized their artwork.  Other activities which enhanced and broadened community awareness and encouraged attendance at the exhibit included my reading a poem at two Escondido City Council meetings in partnership with a local poet founder of Poets, Inc.  The poems created were organized into five categories, reflecting the essence of  each artist’s work--Tapestry, Identity, La Familia, Collective Creations and Environment. On the outside wall of the museum’s main entrance one of the artists incorporated my words into her artwork. 
 
This is a collection of poetic paragraphs printed on the back cover of “Poetry Within Reach in Unexpected Places.”  Escondido is a magical word whose name means “the hidden place.”  Hidden invokes curiosity, imagination and mystery.  Escondido invites you to the obsession of  “desesconder” to discover the hidden with the hope that treasures are revealed.  
 
What is underneath the surface to be unhidden/discovered?  Embrace Alzheimer’s humor, collect lost and found immigrant stories in their own voices, dead trees covered with soil, leaves and seeds turn into fertilizer for new life.  Family members’ essence transformed into sculpted abstract figure…We are public artists “activist citizens.”