I had the pleasure of leading a couple of blackout poetry workshops at the Dallas Museum of Art last weekend. It’s still a huge thrill for me to see a whole room full of people of all ages and backgrounds making art in the same space. I’ve found that folks really don’t need much instruction—they just need materials, some space, some time, and permission to play.

On Saturday, I led an all-teen workshop of 15 students. We worked on poems, and then we went into the galleries to soak up some inspiration. I showed them some pieces I liked and talked about how I look at art in museums and how I look at art in general. One thing I said to them is that it’s one thing to feel something about a piece of art, it’s another thing completely to be able to express it in words. Sometimes you can’t explain why you like a piece, and that’s okay.

I carried an iPad around with me, and as we were looking at the work, I’d pull up a few of my blackout poems to talk about the work in context. At a Mondrian, I talked about color and grids. In sculpture, we talked about subtraction. Etc.

In the Reves collection, which displays the Reves’ collection as it was originally displayed at their villa, I talked about my experiences with 20×200 and collecting art, and how art doesn’t just hang in a museum—it’s something you live with in your everyday life.

Thanks to all the great people at the Dallas Museum of Art for having me. I love teaching, and I love talking about art, so this was a real treat.

See more of the museum’s photos on Flickr →

I was pretty thrilled when The Austin Museum of Art asked me if I wanted to do a Newspaper Blackout event. We got to display a mini-exhibit of originals and prints, and I led a 90 minute blackout poetry workshop. It was a great time, and we had a terrific turnout.

see it bigger

More photos on my Flickr and AMOA’s Facebook page.

Here’s some video Anne Heller (@annevid) shot of the talk:

Big thanks to AMOA and everyone who showed!

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Visual Note-Taking 101 from SXSW 2010

View more webinars from Austin Kleon.

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Back in March, my friends Mike Rohde, Sunni Brown, Dave Gray and I presented a panel to a packed house at the SXSW Interactive conference here in Austin, Texas. Last week, they posted a podcast of the session without visuals – so I spent some time syncing our slides to the audio.

Watch it above, or see the whole thing here: Visual Note-Taking 101 from SXSW 2010.

Watch a short YouTube video of my faces exercise:

And learn more about visual note-taking:

• My notes on our 3-hour Vizthink webinar that got this whole thing started
• Visual Thinking for Writers – a talk I gave to our local Vizthink Austin group (see a few slides)
• My sketchbook and drawings from SXSW 2010
• Use the #viznotes tag to see what people posted on Twitter and Flickr

The coolest artifacts from the panel are the amazing Scout Books that Pinball Publishing had printed for us: read all about them.

I squirreled away a couple of them before we ran out — leave a comment below telling me why you want one okay those were making me feel too guilty that I only have four: how about a link to the coolest thing you’ve seen this week and I’ll pick four winners. Contest ends Monday, May 17th. (Be sure to include your e-mail — it won’t be published.)

I can’t think of a nicer way to cap a release day than with a successful release party in your home town bookstore, so thanks a million to BookPeople, to my wife Meg for baking her delicious chocolate chip cookies,  and to the 50+ folks who came out on Tuesday night! Y’all are the best.

See a bunch of photos from the event on Flickr.

I started things off with a short slideshow about how I started making the poems:

And then I went into a little demonstration of how they’re done. Here I am quoting Allen Ginsberg in “A Supermarket In California“:

And here I am explaining how I think of the poems as “Word Find” puzzles we used to do as kids in elementary school:

After that, Bookpeople hooked everybody up with a marker and a newspaper, and we all set about playing:

I was really stunned by how focused everybody was, and by how many people offered to stand up and read their blackout poems for the group. It was truly awesome.  You can read some of the poems over on the Newspaper Blackout Tumblr.

After that, it was time to sign some books:

Again: thank you thank you thank you to everyone who came out! It was such a gas to see y’all with markers and newspapers in hand.

For those of you outside of Austin, we don’t have many national dates planned yet, but I’m hoping that will change, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Gomez for this really nice writeup of the event:

What stayed with me most was the fun I had. He was right: it was less like work and more like play, a kind of word search for buried humor, hidden wisdom, or laconic lament. Finding that right note of self expression might take more than a little practice however. Kleon has blacked out hundreds and hundreds of these poems. His experience is telling. I struggled with my article and then he mentioned with the timeliness of an oracle that it’s tough to write one from a political column. He finds that the articles from the “Arts or Sports sections are best.”

Austin Kleon has gained a fan not merely because of his down-to-earth and quietly erudite personality, but because the poems he has “found” buried within newsprint are poetical gems in their own right.

Austin Kleon at PechaKucha Night Austin 07 from PechaKucha Night Austin on Vimeo.

Above is the video for my Newspaper Blackout Pecha Kucha presentation last month in Austin.

What is Pecha Kucha?

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

It was incredibly difficult to time and plan out, and it’s probably the best presentation of my work that I’ve come up with. The audience was really amazing. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks to Carla and Herman for inviting me.

Here are all my slides in one deck.

And here’s the 20-second time-lapse video that’s in the presentation: