Memories live and resonate in both the conscious and unconscious spaces of our experience, but art allows for expression that moves beyond simple narrative. This will be the focus of the next WorldCanvass at 5 p.m. Friday, May 4, in the Senate Chamber of Old Capitol Museum. Produced by University of Iowa International Programs and hosted by Joan Kjaer, WorldCanvass is recorded before a live audience and distributed over television, radio, and the Internet. The event is free and open to the public.

Marvin Bell, Iowa’s first poet laureate and longtime faculty member in the UI Writers’ Workshop, will open the program with a collection of poems and reflections on how memory has affected his work. Hugh Ferrer, assistant director of the International Writing Program, will consider imagination and memory as key sources of inspiration for a writer and discuss the MusicIC festival planned for this summer.

Contemporary Spanish painter and filmmaker Felix de la Concha paints and records his subjects while they reminisce about their lives

The legacy of internationally renowned printmaker Mauricio Lasansky will be honored when Lasansky’s son Phillip joins Terry Pitts, director of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, and Anita Jung, associate professor of printmaking in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), to contextualize Lasansky’s work, which includes such breathtaking compositions as The Nazi Drawings.

Contemporary Spanish painter and filmmaker Felix de la Concha and his wife and collaborator Ana Merino, associate professor of Spanish in CLAS, will describe portraiture and film projects of recent years where de la Concha paints and records his subjects while they reminisce about their lives.

The program will conclude with a conversation about the preservation of culture in times of global dispersion. Loyce Arthur, UI associate professor of theatre in CLAS, and others will discuss the connection Carnival brings to people living in the diaspora, Haiti’s only music school and the 2010 earthquake, the role art and activism can play in evoking memories, and how the local Stir Fry project helps individuals translate stories of resettlement into works of art.

WorldCanvass will be streamed live on KRUI-FM and the International Programs website and be available on UITV and iTunes at a later date. More information is available at international.uiowa.edu.