Opening reception and Book Signing
Thursday 9 December, 2010 6:00 to 9:00pm

LEADAPRON presents ten works from Poems & Polaroids: I Journey With You Here alongside special boxed editions of the book and artifacts of the process. A screening of the short film, Un'Ora, Un Mattino, takes place the night of the opening.

The first exhibit of Poems & Polaroids was held in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo Strozzi's Agora|Z Gallery May 28th through July 17th, 2010. The Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi purchased sixteen works from the show for their permanent collection.

Florentine-based art historian John T. Spike writes that, "With this new book, Kate McBride invites us to journey with her as armchair travelers through eighty-four poems and more than two-hundred Polaroids. The milkiness, the painterly, almost ethereal look of the images and the poetic record of a place and time create what McBride describes as 'dreamscapes.' These are not the ice-hard edges of a digitalized pixel. The Polaroid scans maintain the discolouring of time, tape residue and other marks – a genuine representation of how they look pasted in her travel journals. It has been said, 'an un-interpreted dream is like an unopened letter.' Poems & Polaroids is filled with messages about the small things that bind us together to the ones we love, silent landscapes, internal pulses."

The first 100 books of the first edition of one thousand, signed and numbered, with a Polaroid facsimile included, will be offered through LEADAPRON. The first edition includes thirty special boxed sets, ten of which contain an original Polaroid and a handwritten poem.

Kate McBride works as a writer and filmmaker for travel, wine, music and fashion clients in North America and in Europe. Her film and published work is recognized through international awards.

Book credits include Poems & Polaroids: I Journey With You Here and Tales of Two Worlds: Arnie & Soot Navigate Florence published by Mandragora and A Concordance to the Complete Works of E.E. Cummings published by Cornell University Press. She is a monthly contributor to the Florentine newspaper Ambasciata and infrequent contributor to the publication France Today.