The Madtown Poetry Open Mic w/ Paul Baker

Art in the cafe...

Laurel Statz


"The Spectator"


December 2025



Laurel Statz is a painter and Madison area native. Her work, while figurative, is influenced by abstraction and minimalism. The paintings often have a quick and instinctual nature, capturing just what’s needed. While she often times herself to eliminate extra details and over-precision, she has ventured into more detailed works as well. Laurel does not attach narrative to her pieces. Rather, she thinks of them like a journaling process for her scatter-brained psyche. The figures in the pieces are meant to be processing tools for the artist and the viewer. She hopes that seeing these figures helps the...
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Friday, October 7, 2016
8:00 pm

Making his home in north america, Paul Baker speaks a dialect of american english and prefers to drink water in its liquid form. He enjoys the surreal and the grotesque and finds humor in the work of the marquis de sade. Paul hosts a weekly program of chamber music on the student radio station WSUM. He earns his daily crust as a communicator in education. Paul subscribes to the theory of retro incarnation, which posits that, after death, we return as random articles of vintage clothing.

For over ten years Ron hosted poetry readings as well as an open mic at Avol's Bookstore in Madison. His poems have appeared both on-line and in print journals. His manuscript, "The Office of Uncomfortable Admissions," received an honorable mention in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. Ron serves on the board of The Council for Wisconsin Writers, and sells used and out-of-print books on-line under the name Avol's Books LLC. If you have questions about the open mic, call Ron at 608-255-4730, or email him at avols@chorus.net.