FRANK holds poetic Valentine's Day salon

Contrasting traditional sappy Valentine’s Day themes, FRANK Gallery is taking a more artistic approach on love.

This week’s Valentine’s Day-themed salon is a part of FRANK’s weekly — or sometimes biweekly — events reflecting the theme of the gallery at the time.

Currently, FRANK’s theme is “Blues,” and Thursday’s event echoed just that.

The salon was specially tailored for Valentine’s Day, and featured UNC Jazz Combo and Ebony Readers/Onyx Theater (EROT) poetry group together in one salon.

“Our current show is called ‘Blues’ and it seeks to picture the Blues in any artistic way possible,” said Torey Mishoe, manager at FRANK gallery.

“We try to make our salon’s tie in with that theme.”

Kayla Hill, intern at the gallery and member of the UNC ARTery, is a liaison between these two groups and coordinates each Thursday night salon.

This week, she invited both the Jazz Combo and EROT through the ARTery to perform at the special Valentine’s Day salon.

“The salon combines love and the Blues,” Hill said.

The two groups performing added to the overall Valentine’s Day theme, especially in providing an alternate form to view love.

EROT performed love-related poetry while the jazz artists performed bluesy tunes.

The performances alternated periodically so that EROT recited a few poems and then the Jazz Combo performed. This pattern started with jazz and a few snacks, and continued for two hours.

Korde Tuttle, co-president of EROT, said the group performed about seven to eight pieces spread among all 12 members.

There were poems about familial love and platonic love.

When the group performed poems about romantic love, not all of the poems came across as positive and warm.

This sentiment, coupled with the sultry blues music of the night, contributed to the idea of alternative art in expressing love.

“Love is complex, and we hope to remind people that love does not look like it does on a Hallmark card,” Tuttle said.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.