Madtown Poetry Open Mic

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, February 1, 2019
8:00 pm

Featured Reader: Matthew Charles is a poet with a decade of experience. A frequent pop-up at Just Bust, Matthew also has competed at the National level at NPS in Chicago last summer. With his poetry Matthew wants to explore what it is to be the type of vulnerable that encourages and galvanizes others into that safety risking thing we call intimacy - which every human needs - but increasingly we are afraid of. A hallmark of his art is it’s honesty, and themes include family, adoption, faith, race, trauma, and overcoming. His art tends to be quite heavy and it is in that heaviness that the audience is able to connect with him.

Sign up starts at 7:30. The event will start at 8 with the featured reader.

Hosted by Kelli Miner.

Open Mic