LAKEPORT, Calif. – A new exhibit featuring art based on Lake County wildlife will be featured at the Bell Hill Tasting Room.

The display will host a number of local artists including Dennis Blum, Richard Seisser, Judy Cardinale, Sunny Franson, Patty Oates, Jim Warren, Sharon Fenton, Kathy Dufra and Michelle Price.

A welcome reception will be hosted in the tasting room on Sunday, June 24, from 1 p.m. to 3 pm. Normal tasting fees apply.

Each artist's work displays a different medium and landscape setting, offering many different viewpoints of Lake County wildlife.

The exhibit will run through the end of July.

The Bell Hill Tasting Room is located at 125 Park St. in Kelseyville.

For more information contact Julia Martelli at 707-490-4400 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Julie Suk is a North Carolinian who, like all good writers, has taught herself to pay attention to what’s happening right under her nose. Here’s a good example of her poetry.

Loving the Hands

I could make a wardrobe
with tufts of wool
caught on thistle and bracken.

Lost—the scraps
I might have woven whole cloth.

Come watch, the man says,
shearing sheep
with the precision of long practice,
fleece, removed all of a piece,
rolled in a neat bundle.

I’ve been so clumsy
with people who’ve loved me.

Straddling a ewe,
the man props its head on his foot,
leans down with clippers,
each pass across the coat a caress.

His dogs, lying nearby,
tremble at every move—as I do,
loving the hands that have learned
to gentle the life beneath them.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Julie Suk, from her most recent book of poems, Lie Down with Me: New and Selected Poems, Autumn House Press, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Julie Suk and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In June, Poets and Writers, a national organization that supports working writers, renewed their grant to the Lake County Arts Council and Mary McMillan.  

This grant supports the free public writing workshop offered monthly in Lakeport, where writers meet at the Main Street Art Gallery, 325 N. Main St., at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month.  

The Lake County Arts Council sponsors the workshop, and former Lake County Poet Laureate Mary McMillan facilitates it.

Residents from all over Lake County come to the Writers Circle to share memoirs, fiction, essays or poems they have written – or just to listen and get inspired.  

More seasoned writers and writers just beginning join together to offer feedback, build their skills and find new ideas.  

Aged 19 to 90, some people come only one or two times, and others show up every month.

Poets and Writers provides this grant through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.

For more information contact Mary McMillan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Wildhurst Vineyards will host its first art show on Saturday, June 16.

The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the courtyard at Wildhurst Vineyards, 3855 Main St. in Kelseyville.

Entry to the event is free, but they will have wine and food available for purchase.

Participating artists will include Mike Lonero, Judy Cardinale, Patricia Oates, Susan Laymon, Toni Steward and Pat Skoog, Gregg Lindsley, Steve Bellah, Diego and Sherry Harris, Marge Bougas, Sheila O'Hara, Leah Adams, Jeff Tangen and Lynn M. Hughes.

For more information call Wildhurst Vineyards at 800-595-9463.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Art House Gallery will hold its third Friday Gala Art Reception on June 15.

The reception will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Join them for refreshments and a meet and greet with the 32 artists who now are part of the gallery.

The Art House Gallery is located at 15210 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake, telephone 707-994-1716.

Visit the gallery online at http://thearthousegallery.net/ .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Carolyn Hawley, local musician and composer, will play her recent piano recordings of concerts featuring works by Beethoven as well as some modern composers on Saturday, June 16, on “Word Weavers.”

“Word Weavers” is on every Saturday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on KPFZ 88.1 FM and features a different
host with a different topic every week.

Hawley features her own recordings on her show since she is a pianist who specializes in the classics.

KPFZ is also on the web at www.kpfz.org , where most shows are live-streamed.