About a week ago a group of us dropped in on the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture at 111 South Grand Avenue in downtown Bozeman, Montana. The center has been re-adapted from its original progressive school function. Today, or as of January 2013, there are a variety of art pieces and galleries within, and two pieces of material culture caught my eye. They are machines that dispense art.
The first was a former pull-handle cigarette machine that had been converted into an art, music, writings and idea dispensing machine. Go to this website here for more details. This is what the former cig machine looked like.
The second was a paper towel dispenser that now serves as a poetry dispenser. This is what the poetry dispenser looks like:
I pulled a sheet of poetry from that dispenser, and here is the poem in full.
Bloodied and Humbled, by Alexis W.
Life will leave you,
If you’re lucky,
Bloodied and humbled
Now bloodied washes off
The wounds from which it came will
Mend over, scars will fade
A commentary on
The unimportance of the physical
But the humbled will stick
A commentary on
The strength of the mind
And if, for some reason, it doesn’t
If you’re lucky
Life will come to leave you
Bloodied and humbled
Again
The Edge of the Village 
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