A Solo Show in the Making: poetry!

When I get excited about an idea I have trouble sleeping. Well, OK. I have trouble sleeping pretty much all the time. My brain hates to shut off. My body lays there exhausted and it’s like my thoughts are afraid they’ll miss something. Sometimes this can be a good thing.

I was lying awake and thinking, thinking, thinking about how I hated writing separate artist’s statements for each work. There are going to be a lot of works in this show. Why would I want a separate statement for each one? I’d much rather have the work stand on it’s own merits and let the viewer bring whatever they see and feel and think to the work.

So then I had an idea. What if the words were their own thing? What if the words were art themselves? What if the words stood on their own just as the art should stand on its own?

Enter the incomparable Maura High, a poet I’ve worked with before. You can read some of her poetry and see a little of our previous collaboration here. An email or two and a few weeks later and we met at the gallery. I printed up a book of all the work I had finished thus far, brought my sweet little model for her to see, and we talked.

Maura has ideas. Boy did she have ideas! What if we project words on hanging fabric? What if there is a poem that travels around the wall so people have to walk to read it? What if we have yoga in the room? What if there are proximity sensors that turn on sounds of water or a grinding stone when people walk by? (ANYONE! Anyone know how to do this?)

I’m telling you… she’s got me super excited! And now I have MORE ideas.