Switcheroo . Haiku Year in Review . B-sided DIY . Poetry @ The Betsy . Translation . Attic Inspiration . Responses
ATTIC INSPIRATION
Emily Dickinson: December 10, 2010
Happy Birthday Emily! To celebrate, several Broadsided artists created work in response to a selection of your poems.
Artist Jennifer Bevill (jenniferbevill.com): I grew up in Tornado Alley in northern Alabama, where the dirt really is red and the landscape flat and ugly. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers shaped my sensibility. I grew up in a world of strange southern women visiting in kitchens, making weekly trips to the cemetery for fun and to the 5 & 10 for paint-by-number sets. Today, I live in Brooklyn with my family. After graduating from Parson's School of Design, getting an master's from Teacher's College, and working as a teaching artist in the Guggenheim Museum's Learning Through Art program, my work remains rooted in my southern childhood and twisted by a dark humor. Image: "Bobbie's Last Tree," collage and found object sculpture, 6 ½" t x 7" w x 3 ½" d Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Jenny Bevill Not surprisingly with Dickinson, it's a sad story. My mom died in May after a short but intense and completely unexpected battle with cancer. I'd been trying to write thank you notes to all the people who helped us out during her illness but I just hadn't been able to do it. I was overwhelmed with not knowing how to express my feelings. Then I read this poem and it exactly captured the feelings I was having, and I was sure many of her friends and family were having, so I decided to make a piece of art (the deadline helped) and put it on the thank you notes. so thank you for helping me solve that problem. : )
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Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her most recent shows include a two-person show at Feast Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, a four-person show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY, and a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY. You can view some of her work online at www.elizabethterhune.com. Image: "I never hear the word 'escape'," ink & pencil on paper, 11" x 7" Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Elizabeth Terhune Like many people, I respond to Dickinson's incredible compression, her inventiveness. In this case, I particularly liked how the poem opens up at the end (by quieting down a bit?). Also, her wildly fun sense of image and language. "A quicker blood." "A flying attitude." The poem has a resonant interiority to it, but she keeps playful. It is both intensely personal, her vulnerability is felt, but also, with the reference to "prisons broad," connects to circumstances beyond herself. It's a wonderful poem to have in one's head.
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Artist Meghan Keane exhibits nationally and internationally and her works can be found in private collections throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and Japan. Recent projects include a solo exhibition, "PROJECT NIHON / sustainable art travel," in Tokyo; a group exhibition, "Casa de Munecas" in Quito, Ecuador and "do it yourself candide," which Keane was invited to create for the New York Public Library (january 2010). Keane is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio (meghankeanestudio.com). She is also currently a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop. Image: "Wild - Futile - Luxury," ink and whiteout on moleskine paper, 5 1/8" x 8 1/8" Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Meghan Keane What grabbed me about this poem was its obvious double entendre. It's not just about sailing a ship.... What Dickenson achieves in the poem is akin to what my artistic practice strives to do: transform details from everyday life (ED: ships, MK:hair, whiteout) into subtle yet exquisite, borderline seductive experiences. Visceral, even. This drawing of curly hair (pubes? possibly. possibly not.) interspersed with whiteout fragments is one example of this curious approach. Although abstract, my work typically relates to the body and often conveys a pent up bodily energy. For me, art is making something transform from what is expected to what is unexpected and complex and beautiful (even if it's dark and haunting); that process is tactile, using the body as a tool for manipulating materials, and it's deeply pleasurable. When finished, the art often expresses this pleasure in making. I felt this poem by Dickenson was really going towards that sort of multiple interpretations of "pleasure in making" as well. Her poem (for me) is not simply about creating a beautiful poem about sensual pleasure; Dickenson celebrates the "luxury" in wild letting go that is part of all varieties of human creativity—artistic creativity included.
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Artist Jen P. Harris (Hudson, NY) is a conceptual/ representational visual artist working in painting and works on paper. She received her MFA in Painting from Queens College CUNY and her BA in Art from Yale. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group shows in New York and elsewhere; recent exhibition venues include the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation and Gallery 151 (New York, NY); the Rockland Center for the Arts (West Nyack, NY); the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington). Her works on paper were recently selected to be included in The Drawing Center's Viewing Program. www.jenpharris.com Image: "Wild Nights," watercolor and acrylic on paper, 11" x 15" Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Jen P. Harris I chose this poem because I loved the image of "a heart in port." The spirit of the poem meshed nicely with the images of love and desire I've been working with for a few years now.
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Artist Se Thut Quon lives in Kentucky. Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Se Thut Quon
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Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her most recent shows include a two-person show at Feast Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, a four-person show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY, and a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY. You can view some of her work online at www.elizabethterhune.com. Image: "It was not Death, for I stood up," ink on paper, 11" x 7" Download the Broadsided file Why this poem? An answer by artist Elizabeth Terhune Many things strike me about this poem. The inverted checklist structure (it was not this, because . . .). The slow pace. Her brilliant language, "for all the Bells/put out their Tongues, for Noon." the stunning conclusion "Chaos — stopless — cool" always shocks me.
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