In the mid-90’s, I studied printmaking for 3 years at Alfred University, N.Y. I began with my classic poems and arranged and composed imagery to enhance or subvert the text. Then I used images and wrote text specific for the visual composition, spontaneously, improvisationally, as the monoprints and photolithographs were drying. Visual artists use text as a mere graphic element. Was it possible to use words as a resonating and inevitable conclusion, rather than ersatz bits of visual debris?
7 PM and True Story (both in alternative versions)and Rushing are examples of text and image, with Rushing being the final product of this possibility, whereby an image actually replaces a stanza entirely. (A musical cd with words and words set to music of these 3 poems and 9 others is available and titled Incantations.) I wanted to bring a singular elegance to what is considered, by this culture at this time, to be high crimes. Accidental Still Life, also the cover of the current edition of Lithium For Medea is a similar in intention, to see slivers of silver where there should be none.
VISUAL GEOMETRIES IN JANUARY and FOUR EARTH TONES IN WINTER are examples of the monoprints with text created for the specific visuals, organically, as if the words rose from the dirt, as if the earth had a secret mouth and could speak. I worked with earth tones and created surfaces to resemble cave walls and the visuals to imply primitive symbols and writing. I wanted the surface to look muddy, like a medium you would dance, die, give birth or pray in. The monoprint alphabets that emerged, with recurrent representations of jugs, moons, syringes, fronds, equations and hurricanes are not metaphorical but metahistorical.
While the entire monoprint series is called EVIDENCE THAT EVOLUTION IS A FAILED EXPERIMENT, the pencil text of these pieces is as follows and illuminates the issues of what is fundamental (as the triangle) and the reinterpretation of our collective human journey in the midst of an unprecedented technological upheaval.
VISUAL GEOMETRIES IN JANUARY: OLD/ Thunder. Anger we etch on the cave, the bark page. (Arrows point to how the text is to be read.) We invent symbols. The saga of rain. The strange triangle. The storm. The way night moans in January. (Follow arrows.) We will remember the tree that looked like a God. We will amulets. We will kneel and pray. It is always winter. 1000 years pass. 1000 years pass. 1000 years pass. NEW/ Del cubed psi minus rho over epsilon. This is an equation about electrostatic potential at a point of origin in a coordinate system, the density of space charge and behavior thereof in three-dimensions. 1000 years are passing. 1000 winters between these visual geometries, these hieroglyphics. The triangle remains in fashion. That’s something. (THUS) Both sequences are useless to ordinary people in normal circumstances. 1000 winters are passing. Your face is an epic. You don’t drink enough bleach. You should pray more, diet, learn calligraphy. You should smoke more opium and get a hobby, start a journal, a charity. Can you say chemotherapy in another language?
4 EARTH TONES IN WINTER: Burnt Sienna not yet invented & several significant Questions.
(Burnt Sienna) Always darkness, thunder, burnt wood, glyphs while you sleep beneath an archive of stars. You should name things. You should invent antibiotics and stop fucking your daughter. There’s an order to the mud. The moon looks like a canoe for a reason. Can you find your mouth? Can you count to four?
(Yellow ochre) An inspiration. Clay. Pottery. Barter. Gold crowns for concubines in gowns of eagle feathers. Illumination. Manuscripts and lamps. On the other mountain, they eat sand. Make they applaud first and remember to say thank you. Invent manners.
Remember your prayers.
(Indian Red #234) We cross the great waters. They are finite and disappoint. We have metal now, with points. The spear. The compass. The novel and brain surgery. The brick high school. The nuclear family. The nuclear bomb. You tell me. What went wrong?
(Raw Umber) In the night, we ask forgiveness. Random lightning, shiver of birch. A lone oboe. Twigs like razors. River hungry like an ugly mouth. Lipstick across a curse. I was an A student. I was fast track. I was promised music.
EVIDENCE THAT EVOLUTION IS A FAILED EXPERIMENT.
The most complex of the series, in which I attempted a millennial reconstruction of the collective ancient. The pencil text reads: (Wall one) The stucco walls of the barrios of Los Angeles do not look like this. They do not speak of Gods and harbors. The boulevards are named for butchers and saints----Alvarado, Santa Ana, San Pedro, Santa Monica. Knife killers are long remembered, their blood miracles. Slaughter is a gift some are born for. (Wall two) Women have the names of film stars and flowers--- Sophia. Liz.
Iris. Violet. Camille. Dahlia. Rose. They smoke cigarettes on terraces, mourning what might have been and wait for nightfall with a pint of sloe gin. The phone doesn’t ring. They are drunk again. (Wall three) Full moon in Los Angeles. The bitch struts naked
And yellow above avenues of random jasmine, idiot smog blue night you may not survive. Women stand at windows, paralyzed. They reach for a shawl, feel a strange chill, while the moons rises and drifts like a lost ship, white as a flag of surrender above the decadent palms. Sky a tarnished burgundy. Sunsets in a debauchery of magenta, as if fuchsias had everywhere risen. Red salsas slide to streets wind choreographs, leaves a chorus of flamenco dancers. In between, the degrees from universities, psychiatrists, yoga, French, opera, how to sail. (Wall four) The moments are mute associations punctuated by our slow comings and goings, our reasons and unpackings beside shrill lamps. I took entirely different vows, balanced winter pears in my palms, held them to the light like syringes of morphine. I was purified by intensity. History is personal; scrawl hieroglyphics on your arms, (Alley all down) equations and tributaries that matter. All rivers know you, and recite your bouquet of names.
For three years in the remote Allegany Mountains, I made such prints, asking what is illumination? Time? Progress? The profound possibilities and limitations of region and climate? What are words, shapes, inevitabilities, and the role of chance? I was a woman of the word approaching the image. It was the juxtaposition of poetry and science that led to certain recurrent questions about knowledge, intuition and alchemy, the rules of order within chaos and entropy, the lines between genres and how they can be subverted. And the juxtaposition of urban California in the 9-month winter of the northeast. That certain images lend themselves to narrative is natural. To fuse the two has continued to engage my active interest. The page is neither silent nor flat. In the fingers of an adept, the page is origami that flies.
I am indebted to my printmaking professors, Joseph Sheer of Alfred University and Jesse Sheffrin, Dean of Art, R.I.S.D.I/ Brown, for their audacity and generosity.
