Artemis Speaks – We Need Art Now More Than Ever
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on January 7, 2021.
Jeri Rogers has worked as a model, a James Madison junior high social studies teacher, a daytime TV host and a researcher with the Committee of Foreign Affairs on Capitol Hill. Rogers – a Texas native who lived in New York City and on Bent Mountain briefly in her ‘20s— is a professional photographer and the editor/founder of Artemis Journal, a Floyd-based art and literary journal that recently published its 27th issue.
In the mid ‘70s, Rogers was hired as director of The Women’s Resource Center at the Roanoke YWCA through a grant awarded to TAP, Total Action Against Poverty, currently called Total Action for Progress. During her two-year tenure as director, she started a writers’ workshop for abused women, hiring local volunteer writers to lead the classes. “We saw some amazing results with women coming out of their shells and writing,” Rogers said.
Plugging into the Roanoke artist and writer community, and being an artist herself with a dark room photography studio in the city, Rogers soon had an inspired idea to start a literary/art journal that would provide a platform for the women she was working with. The name “Artemis,” a Greek lunar goddess archetype, came to her during meditation.
Following the publication of a 1977 first issue, Artemis took off with a life of its own, sometimes under the direction of different hands, as Rogers and her husband, Jonathan Rogers, raised their three children and lived on St. Croix island for a couple of years. Initially, the journal featured women’s writing but opened up to submissions from men after two years. The project led to poetry readings and art shows, one that featured Rogers photographic study of mountain women.
After 23 active years of publication (from 1977 to 2000), the journal was dormant for 13 years, until Rogers reunited with past poetry contributor Maurice Ferguson (the journal’s current literary editor) and enlisted the design skills of Virginia Lepley. “We really missed it,” Rogers said about Artemis. “In 2013, I said, ‘let’s do it for one year. Let’s just see what happens.”’
“It took off!” The size of the journal, the contributors and, eventually, the volunteer staff grew. Early issues were published with limited financial resources and Rogers, who has lived in Floyd County for 20 years now, noticed the journals weren’t holding up very well. The new Artemis incarnation was upgraded to a beautifully printed, perfect-bound book of high quality, acid-free paper to highlight the vibrant colored artwork. Rogers said that she and Lepley knew the kind of top-notch product they wanted to create and would figure out how to pay for it later.
Today, Artemis is a non-profit organization that is supported by donations, book sales and a yearly grant from The Roanoke Arts Commission. The Taubman Museum of Art is another supportive partner, hosting the yearly book launches that have evolved into well-attended celebrated events featuring notable speakers, such as poet laureates, famed poet Niki Giovanni and Appalachian Mountain authors Sharyn McCrum and Beth Macy.
In 2019 Rogers had the idea to combine that year’s book launch with a fundraiser. The program’s highlight was a ballet titled “Poetry in Motion,” which was performed by students of the Southwest Virginia Ballet who interpreted selected poems from the 2019 journal.
Big plans were underway for the 2020 issue launch, when the June event was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. With a “Season of Women” theme, the launch was set to honor the 100-year anniversary of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.
The celebration of the suffragettes’ accomplishments was to be combined with one for nationally and internally acclaimed artist and Roanoke native, Dorothy Gillespie. Gillespie, who passed away in 2012, would have been 100 years old in 2020. Rogers recalled that Gillespie, who was known for her large and colorful abstract metal sculptures, donated a pastel for the 1977 inaugural cover of Artemis, which was also later featured as a downtown Roanoke mural. Gillespie’s art aptly graces the cover of the 2020 Artemis issue, and the 2020 issue launch was planned to coincide with the Taubman exhibition’s “Celestial Centennial: The Art and Legacy of Dorothy Gillespie.
Following the cancellation of the planned launch, a virtual video launch was suggested and presented at the museum. Keynote speaker Jeanne Larsen read from past journals amid the art exhibit of Dorothy Gillespie’s works. Larsen, a poet, author and past English professor at Hollins University, also participated in a conversation with Rogers and Museum of Art’s Education Manager Stephanie Fallon.
From there, the online Artemis outreach gained momentum and a bi-monthly Podcast “Artemis Speaks” was born (buzzsprout.com/1262438). In collaboration with co-producer Skip Brown at Roanoke’s Final Track Studio, Rogers kicked off her first podcast with guest Nikki Giovanni, recently named Artemis’s Poet Emeritus. So far, Rogers has done 9 podcasts, one of which was an interview with Dorothy Gillespie’s son, Gary Israel, who heads up Gillespie’s foundation.
“We have a community of Artemis artists and writers who are home alone trying to navigate these times,” Rogers noted. “The podcast keeps us connected and spreads the mission of what Artemis does, which is to encourage the arts in the mountains.”
The journal encourages young artists and writers and new voices to submit, while also publishing the works of established and celebrated writers and artists. Maurice Ferguson, the journal’s literary editor, was reported to have received over 400 submissions for the 2020 issue, which came from across the United States, as well as from foreign countries. One-hundred and seventy of those submissions appeared in the issue.
Artemis 2021 is in the works (the submission date has passed). The 2020 issue and previous issues can be viewed and purchased in Floyd at Troika Gallery and The Floyd Center for the Arts, or via the Artemis website, artemisjournal.org. Ten percent of journal profits are donated to the Turning Point, a shelter for abused women and their children in Southwest Virginia.
“In order to survive, you have to adapt,” Rogers said about the changing times and her new role as a podcast host. “We need art. Art is healing. More than ever, we need it as we’re healing now,” she said. ________Colleen Redman
Note: Read about the 2016 Artemis launch that featured Virginia Poet Laureate Ron Smith and honored Roanoke artist Betty Branch, whose pink marble sculpture, The Dancer, graced the issue’s cover HERE.
