Metaphor in Art

Poet, Physicist and Psychoanalyst Discuss Metaphor in Art Gallery Seminar
October 28, 2015

Sonoma State University professor Anne Goldman hosts an interdisciplinary seminar about the role of metaphor in daily life on Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. in the University Art Gallery at Sonoma State. "Metaphorical Thinking: A Conversation across Disciplines," draws upon expertise across a wide range of schools, with a poet, physicist and psychoanalyst each discussing how they use metaphor in their respective fields.

"Metaphor is not merely relevant, but inescapable in everyday life," says Goldman. The talk will be followed by a reception. The seminar is free and open to the public. Parking on campus is $5-$8.

Brenda Hillman has published nine collections of poetry, including "Practical Water" (2009), for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry. Hillman has been increasingly interested in the innovative and experimental lyric traditions, particularly in how the Romantic concepts of nature and spirit have manifested in contemporary poetry. In her essay entitled "Split, Spark, and Space," Hillman writes about the emergence of different kinds of lyric impulses in her writing.

Miquel Salmeron is a principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley Materials Science and Engineering Department. Salmeron holds a Ph.D. from the University Autonoma of Madrid, Spain. His research focuses on fundamental studies of surface properties in vacuum, under gases and under liquids. In 2012 he received the MRS Medal and in 2015 received the Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society

Ellen Siegelman is a Jungian psychoanalyst in practice in Berkeley. She is also grounded in the Freudian and relational traditions of psychoanalysis. Her interest in metaphor goes back to her undergraduate major in English and her Master's Degree in literature from the University of Minnesota where she studied with the poets Robert Penn Warren and Allen Tate before getting her Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Siegelman is author of "Personal Risk: Mastering Change in Love and Work," which was awarded a Distinguished Contribution to the Media Award by the American Psychological Association, and "Metaphor and Meaning in Psychotherapy."