art and basketry and ekphrasis and fibers and poetry 3:05 pm
One of my poems is today’s featured text on the “Ars Poetica” portion of Dan Waber’s “Logolalia” community of websites devoted to the digital language arts.
I wrote the poem after visiting the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY, in 2006. On exhibit was a tiny native basket woven to hold a single garden bean. I admired the artist (unknown) who had taken such great care while making such a small thing.
Thanks to Dan Waber for posting my poem.
art and construction and ekphrasis and fibers and poetry 5:40 pm
I’m back from New York City where I attended the 2008 AWP conference. After arriving at my hotel last Wednesday, I took some time to visit the nearby Museum of Arts & Design on West Fifty-third Street. I entered the museum just in time to join a tour of the current exhibition, “Pricked: Extreme Embroidery,” one of a series of exhibitions which explore how contemporary artists are incorporating tangible materials (both traditional and innovative) into their artwork.
The piece which I found to be most memorable was Lament by Paul Villinski, a construction shaped as an enormous bird with outstretched wings mounted on a large wall. Villinski created the bird’s menacing wings out of brown, black, and dark blue gloves which he found on city streets and stitched together; and he created the bird’s headless rib cage out of a discarded backpack frame. Sewing needles hang vertically from the gloves on strands of thread.
Already, I’m writing a poem about the piece. For me, Lament evokes the Angel of Death, the fall of Icarus, the ominous descent of a vulture, the great wingspans of the albatross or eagle, or the Nike of Samothrace. It may take me another few days of writing to know which way my poem will go. But I’m already deep within the initial stages of creation, using some strategies which I picked up while attending the AWP conference (and also the recent Williams College Museum of Art training). For example, I’m sketching the wings in great detail; I’m drawing some imagined “before” and “after” scenes; I’m putting on and taking off my own gloves; I’m rotating a photo from the museum catalog; I’m free-writing on the word “lament;” I’m looking for other poetic elegies; I’m seeking out musical equivalents.
So this will be my AWP poem.
