The Key: Lady Grizzly & Sir Charles Otter (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780615606514)

Dividing livelihood between New York and Chicago may be all Ice Gayle Johnson does by half. The cool plurality of her sibilant first person suggests a lineage, an eponymous book title, perhaps, in itself - oracular. Empery, certainly, the lot of her talents - its salad of diversity, distribution and influence - decidedly Caesar, no mere lettuce. Already multi, media among her many hands further subsume boundary; evince singular, quite apart from uniqueness as poet, editor, publisher, performer, and photographer. Ice assays beauty vital in its combinatorial aesthetic, transformation and ascription to the everyday: the artist complete, recognizable as well to Warhol as Baudelaire. The stylist, she shapes hair - sculpts, carves, clips, cuts, colors, configures and casts: supplements, creates -or, as case varies, complements-image everywhere we see. The "Five-point Cut," "Graduated Bob," and "Fire Fly" are hers. Former artistic director and general manager for Vidal Sassoon of Chicago, designer and developer of salons, teacher, consultant, cicerone of product and trend, she has sat on Clairol's Presidential Council side-by-side with Nancy Reagan's colorist, been juried into Intercoiffeur, and continues to maintain a cohort of private clients. A founder and shaper of Uphook Press, Ice co-edited and contributed to its debut collection, "A Cautionary Tale: Peer into the Lives of Seven New York Performing Poets," in 2008. Three other anthologies have followed: "you say. say." (2009), "Hell Strung and Crooked" (2010), and "gape-seed" (2011). Professional photographer, she has been represented by Ward Nasse Gallery, New York, participating in group shows from 2000 through 2006. Her photographs have been published by Marcel Schulman Greeting Cards, Signature Greetings, Broader Bond, and Greeting Card Software. Ice the performance poet tours coast to coast from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York to The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Her spoken word tracks have been featured by Stay Thirsty Media and Poetz.com. Eponymous CD and DVD are available at CDbaby and at DVD.com. For more information about her multitude of goings on visit her website (that she of course designed and built) at www.icephotopoet.com.