photo by Jim Barcus
The Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Fellow pairs poetry, sound and pop culture with hula hoops and other unexpected props
Vanessa Aricco, a 2025 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Fellow, is not just an “on-the-page” kind of poet. A self-identifying “multimedia poet,” Aricco marries confessional writing, performance art and sound experiments with visually interactive elements in work that embodies a blend of high and low art with a nostalgic yet resonant maturity. “I knew I didn’t just want my writing to be on the page,” Aricco said in a recent interview. “Anti-perfection is kind of my thing.”
Whether it be poetry albums set to unusual soundscapes, video installations, idiosyncratic hula hooping performances and videos, or podcasting, Aricco’s artistic journey is borne of genre aversion, identity interrogation and low-fi experimentation. Her list of accolades over the last five years or so, and in particular those from Charlotte Street, is the culmination of years of quietly radical work, rooted as much in introspection as in cultural theory.
Since releasing her first poetry album, “The Midnight Rush,” in 2017 — a tactile, avant-garde project featuring power tools and ambient sounds — Aricco has continued to explore the relationship between language and sound. Each project is distinct: One album, “Human Animal,” leaned into digital manipulation, while her most recent one includes singing and elements of teenage poetry. “It’s kind of concept-y,” she says. “Jungian integration with my younger self … but also bringing in the 40-year-old side of myself that I am now.”
Her longtime partner, Ashley Raines, a professional musician with more than 20 years of experience, collaborates with Aricco to produce the music behind her albums. Their home studio has evolved into a space that fosters both creative risk-taking and spiritual grounding.
“As an artist, as a writer, as a creator — what more do you need than the gift of time and space?” Aricco asks. Her work with Charlotte Street, beginning with a Charlotte Street Writing Residency from 2019 to 2022, has been pivotal in legitimizing and elevating her interdisciplinary approach. “Charlotte Street has been with me since day one,” she says. The affiliation led to opportunities such as creating poetry for Art in the Loop and facilitating Artist INC workshops through the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
While rooted in poetry, Aricco’s practice has taken on a performative dimension beginning at the 2023 Charlotte Street Gala, where she debuted as “Miss Fortune,” a surrealist fortune teller who distributed more than 200 handmade fortune cards — each crafted with cut-out eyes from Vogue magazines and stamped with cryptic messages.
“I felt like that was my first live performance,” she said. “I really learned that people need someone to talk to.” The piece combined aspects of visual and poetic fragmentation, echoing her admiration for figures like Brian Eno, Patti Smith and Jim Morrison. “Everything I do is very conceptual and
very in-the-mind for me.”
One of Aricco’s more unexpected outlets is hula hooping — an activity performed on her Waldo porch she began documenting in 2019 on social media via digital video before the pandemic. What began as a movement practice evolved into a meditative and transformative performance tool. “Repetition is a form of change,” she says. “It’s very meditative for me. It’s amazing what things come up in my head while I’m hooping.”
At Vulpes Bastille, in 2024, she revived a decade-old character named Baby Lady — complete with blonde wig — for a performance titled “Welcome to Fantasy Land, Don’t Let Reality Get You.” In one variation, she lies in a hula hoop like a fetus, slowly rising and hooping in front of video projections as her affected persona transforms. Aricco sees hula hooping as “silent poetry,” and a physical manifestation of her themes: unbecoming, decentering the human and embodying vulnerability. “Everything I do is born out of my limitations,” she said. “I don’t have proper equipment, professional photos or videos … but that limitation drives creativity.”
During the pandemic, Aricco co-founded the Confessing Animals podcast with poet Frances Story (formerly Poet Jen Harris), named as an homage to the work of eclectic French academic Michel Foucault. The pair interviewed writers from their shared workshop circle. “The COVID (era) was so fruitful for me,” Aricco says. She began working on a full-length poetry manuscript, “A New Buoyancy,” in 2019, a project that centers around humans “…devolving back into the ocean” — her first not rooted in personal narrative.
Born in Florida and raised in Texas, Aricco studied sociology and journalism at the University of North Carolina system, with study abroad stints in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. She interned at Vice in New York City and stayed far longer than planned — ironically, without engaging in the city’s poetry or art scene. “I had no interest in school,” she said. “I was supposed to be there for a summer …
it became an extended stay.”
She later lived in Colorado before settling in Kansas City in 2015 with Raines. Touring with him gave her what she calls “a condensed education in artistry.” She credits those early years on the road as foundational. “I’ve learned how to be an artist in the world,” she says.
For more information: vanessaaricco.com/home and vanessaaricco.bandcamp.com
