This museum workshop during ArtsWalk First Thursday invites participants to engage in ekphrasis—writing that responds to visual art—through close encounters with UCR ARTS exhibitions including From Here to the Horizon: Photographs in Honor of Barry Lopez. Using guided discussion and creative prompts, poets will explore how artworks can spark language, emotion, and narrative. The workshop emphasizes attentive looking, imaginative response, and experimentation, welcoming writers of all experience levels to develop original poems.

Teaching Artist


Frederick García (they/he) is a Xikanx writer and poet from southern California. They are a Master of Fine Arts student in the Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts program at UC Riverside, a recipient of the department’s inaugural Vice Provost Excellence Fellowship Award, and a 2024-25 Gluck Family Foundation Fellow. Their work explores identity, familial histories, and inherited dynamics. 

This workshop is made possible by the Gluck Fellows in the Arts Program at UC Riverside.

Image: David Maisel, Terminal Mirage 14, 2003, The Home Ground Collection: Gift of the artist in honor of Barry Lopez, Sheldon Museum of Art.