Birds of a Feather, by PAM Jam

Birds of a Feather

The video is a product created for PAM Jam, an annual collaborative event in Saint Augustine, FL for Poets, Artists and Musicians. Typically in fall, teams present at Butterfield Garage Gallery and the Corazon Cinema (host to Ancient City Poets). This year due to the pandemic, live events have been cancelled, and the project has morphed into books, videos and social media programs. 

Christy Sheffield Sanford was the poet and videographer; Debra Mixon Holliday was the artist. Duffy Bishop interpreted the poems, and Chris Carlson composed the music and played guitar. The calls of crows and ravens play a starring role.

In the video, we thank many people and above all poet Loretta Leto. Loretta was inspired by her late friend Carol Green, to realize the PAM Jam idea.

https://pam-jam.com  to donate 

The book Birds of a Feather, with poems and images in colour, is now available at Amazon. The artist Debra Mixon Holliday and poet Christy Sheffield Sanford collaborated on the creation of this work. 
 

Artist Debra Mixon Holliday

Debra is a native of Florida’s central Gulf Coast where, as a child, she had free reign to wander her grandparents' farm and ranch. Those wanderings began a foundation of watching and observing the region’s flora and fauna that now influence her art. Working primarily as a printmaker and mixed media artist, she explores nature as a boundless well of subject matter. Our relationships to nature also serve as  an entry point to addressing themes on boundaries, connections, sense of place, time, memory, and identity.  Debra holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from Eckerd College and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of South Florida, both located in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Since 2014, Debra has resided in her adopted hometown of Saint Augustine, Florida, where she is an enthusiastic member of Butterfield Garage Art Gallery. Her work is available through the gallery, on her website, and at various outdoor art shows throughout the state, where she has won a number of awards. In 2019, Debra seized an opportunity to escape the corporate world and transitioned to become a full-time artist. She looks forward to continuing with learning, exploring, and pursuing expression through her art. 

https://www.debramixonholliday.com 


Poet Christy Sheffield Sanford

Christy Sheffield Sanford, daughter of visual artists, grew up in Atlanta. She spent several years at Rollins College before obtaining a Bachelor of Arts from Georgia State University. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and Interarts from Antioch University. Christy has received State of Florida recognition awards in Literature and regional grants in New Forms and has won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. She was the first Virtual Writer-in-Residence for trAce, formerly housed at Nottingham-Trent University. Her representative web-specific works are being archived at Washington State University. Sanford has been an experimental artist-writer, specializing in Genre Fusion and Interdisciplinary Arts for over thirty-five years. Christy is the author of eight small press books including The Hs: The Spasms of a Requiem and The Cowrie Shell Piece (Baroque and Rococo Strains). Her digital animated poetry, featured in literary magazines, is housed at Vimeo. Her work has been published by A-3, Inverted Syntax and The Ekphrastic Review. Her essay, “The Roots of Non-linearity: Toward a Theory of Web-Specific Art-Writing” is forthcoming from The Digital Review.

christysheffieldsanford.com


Musicians Duffy Bishop and Chris Carlson 

On the West Coast, Duffy is a Hall of Fame member for the Cascade Blues Association (Portland), Washington Blues Society (Seattle) and a recipient of both organizations’ Lifetime Achievement Award. She won the Cascade Blues Society’s Female Vocalist Award so many years in a row they renamed it the Duffy Bishop Female Vocalist Award. Duffy was inducted into Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2016. With long-time collaborator, guitarist and husband Chris Carlson, they’ve played venues across the US, Canada, Norway, Japan, Hong Kong, and Austria. “Bishop is a revelation, belting dynamic blues, sometimes in duet with the blistering guitar of her husband, bandleader Chris Carlson” -- Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle. When not touring with their band, Duffy and Chris have performed with Teatro ZinZanni, a circus/cabaret/tent show in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and with the Palazzo show in Europe. Duffy starred in the lead role as Madame ZinZanni, a role also performed by Thelma Houston, Joan Baez and Ann Wilson. Duffy played Janis Joplin in a Seattle production of the play Janis, with Chris as Musical Director. Sam Andrew, guitarist for Janis’ band Big Brother and the Holding Company, was a show advisor. Through that connection, Duffy toured Japan with Big Brother. She played the role of Dr. Frankenfurter in Seattle’s Empty Space Theater production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  

duffybishop.com