Greeted with a table of wine, cookies and a cake, guests filed into the Venue Fine Arts & Gifts. Gabe Colman, curator of the Venue, and his parents welcomed everyone by talking about family traditions of how Valentine’s Day was special to them, continued through the crafting of hand-made Valentines at the gallery.
“Valentines would come around, and that was the go-over-the-top thing with boxes and 3-D things and doilies and lace and amazing things,” said Michelle Martin-Colman, mother of Gabe Colman and co-proprietor of the Venue.
The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts welcomed locals, newcomers, couples and friends Tuesday evening to share their poetry and love letters in honor of Valentine’s Day at an event called “Words of Love.”
The atmosphere was comfortable for the audience members, who all seemed to know one another. While some of the poets read pieces they wrote, others sang songs. With everyone at ease by the end of the event, the attendees began casually talking to one another about how their days had been. One man had said he had a colonoscopy that day while another said it was a day of mourning.
Tonia Matthew, a regular at Venue Fine Arts & Gifts, began by reading a prose poem about cats.
“I’ve never been terribly good at romance, so I have decided to read some poems about love but not strictly about love,” Matthew said.
Bob Selvaggi, a Bloomington resident, found inspiration for poetry when he moved to Bloomington from an old farm. He said he had always wanted to write but didn’t have the inspiration to write much at the farm.
“There is something going on here, this creative vortex I’ll call it,” Selvaggi said. “It was fate that got me here. Otherwise I would not have written probably, or at least not like I’m doing now.”
Selvaggi read three of his poems, including one for his love of a brewery.
Dave Colman, a lawyer and Gabe Colman’s father, read an anthology. He began by speaking of high school love with the repeating phrase “sways with a wiggle when she walks.”
Dave continued with a poem about his college years. He said it had dazzled women in college.
“This captures what I was about and what most of us were about in the ‘60s,” Dave said.
Dave looked at his valentine, Michelle Martin-Colman, while reading a poem that he said represented his love now and in the future. After Dave spoke, Michelle Martin-Colman went next. She first began describing her love for old poetry and compared it to her feelings toward current poems. She said they are too hard to understand now.
In between reading poems, Martin-Colman handed Dave a lace-filled, crafty and detailed valentine. For the past 34 years the two have kept up a tradition.
“We make Valentines for each other each year for each other,” Martin-Colman said. “Thirty-four years. ”
