Retrospective: “Now, Again, Poetry, I Grasp For You”

Now, again, poetry,

…I grasp for you, your bloodstained splinters, your

ancient and stubborn poise

—Adrienne Rich, “The Fact of a Doorframe”

The following is an excerpt from my undergraduate thesis, a year-long exploration of spirituality through making art.

The serpentine form is haunting me. It’s been several months since I saw the documentary Rivers and Tides, in which sculptor Andy Goldsworthy creates breathtaking structures entirely from native natural materials—leaves, thorns, mud, ice, stones—only to document their literal disintegration through time and natural processes. Watching Goldsworthy work, slow and deliberate, sometimes seeing a structure unexpectedly crumble beneath his hands—it’s an otherworldly experience. “There are always these obsessive forms you cannot get rid of,” Goldsworthy admits, sounding as if he himself is haunted by the forms that repeatedly appear in his work—circles, egg-shaped cairns, stone arches, and the snake-like or river-like line that he calls “the serpentine form.”

I love all of Goldsworthy’s work, but I am particularly captivated by the serpentine form in its many versions. He draws it in a canvas of snow atop a frozen pond; he builds it into a wall of dried clay in a museum gallery; he recreates it in wet leaves atop a flat stone. It’s a little different every time, but you’d know it anywhere.

Months before initiating this journey, I created a mixed-media painting that borrowed one version of Goldsworthy’s serpentine form. In it, I used red Carolina clay (mixed with a binder) on a wood support to create the bold line of the form. The background texture was formed by torn sandpaper and found objects from nature that I had painted black. Now I feel a strong leading to work with similar materials and again to borrow Goldsworthy’s serpentine form, but this time to incorporate text. I turn to poetry, the first art form I ever loved. The text itself will create the form—poetry as media.

I find two poems that speak to me of the direct experience of God. The first, “Evening,” is a short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in which the final stanza describes the “immensity and fear” of the human experience. We search for our place in the universe and the meaning of our presence here, unable to quite grasp the idea that God is both external and within us: “now bounded, now immeasurable, / it is alternately stone in you and star.” We are flawed, stumbling, imprisoned human creatures, and yet we contain sparks of the divine Source from which we spring.

The second poem, “Matins” by Denise Levertov, explores the possibility that God is found in mundane everyday routines, in kitchens and bathrooms and dirty streets as well as in holy places. The final section of this long poem directly addresses the divine: “Marvelous Truth, confront us / at every turn, / in every guise… / Thrust close your smile / that we know you, terrible joy.” Levertov’s word choice indicates her ambivalence about the omnipresence of God. The possibility that the divine is woven into daily life, that no place exists where God is not, brings a mixed reaction that is both welcoming and fearful.

Both poems suggest that the divine is as near as we allow it to be, that the Source is somehow tangible. I see a connection to Annie Dillard’s description of the beliefs of a certain Hasidic teacher: “[A]ll we see holds holiness… This is not pantheism but pan-entheism: The one transcendent God made the universe, and his presence kindles inside every speck of it” (For the Time Being). I am drawn to these poems because they suggest that it is not possible for us to truly be anything other than awed and a little bit afraid of the nearness of God, who dwells within us whether or not we acknowledge (or enjoy) that presence.

I make multiple photocopies of each poem and soak the copies in coffee for a couple of days to dull the bright-white copier paper. Meanwhile, I gesso a pine plank and use charcoal to draw the winding form on the gessoed wood. It pleases me to again be immersed in the landscape of this curving, flowing line. Next, I fill in the background of the form with black gesso, leaving the form as unpainted negative space. I like the bold yet empty look of it, and it remains at this stage for several days.

The following week, tearing the coffee-tinted sheets of text into very small pieces—single words or parts of words—I soak the bits of text briefly in a solution of matte medium and water. I begin to layer the text onto the serpentine form.

Although I am placing the bits of text at random, the repetitive act of handling and placing each piece allows the poems to sink deeply into my awareness. Again and again I see the words “alternately stone in you and star” and “terrible joy”; I carry these words in my heart during the days of working on this piece.

I am constructing a physical form from literal pieces of poetry. The drips of wet binder integrate with the black background as I add numerous layers of text to the winding form. The serpentine form, flat against the background at first, has risen dimensionally from the support.

…A friend suggests that the serpentine form might be more striking—and more true to the influence of Andy Goldsworthy—if I incorporate gradations of color. It feels right. I decide to keep the central part of the form as the lightest tone to give it somewhat of a glow, with the darkest sections at the top and bottom of the form.

I begin painting segments of the form with coffee. It’s a slow process—I have to let each application dry overnight before adding the next. Drips from the coffee mingle with the dried matte medium drips, leaving further traces of the long process of creating this piece.

In the end, the lightest section of text is tinted only by the original soaking, while the darkest sections at the top and bottom of the piece receive up to seven separate applications of coffee. I title the finished piece Direct Experience of God. It is the most visually striking work I have done yet.

There are many images of Andy Goldsworthy’s work available on the Web. A good starting point is here. 

Retrospective: Poetry and Process

Over & Over / Breath (Diptych). 2005.

Stitching, stains, pencil, and found objects on paper.

I cannot walk an inch

without trying to walk to God.

—Anne Sexton

This is an excerpt from my undergraduate senior thesis, which describes my attempt in 2005-2006 to clarify my spiritual path by making art about it.

…In a moment of anxiety and desire to work on a low-pressure project, I decide to make a mess, to get my hands dirty and just play. I steep several teabags in water for an hour or two and then pour and drip the dark tea onto a large sheet of heavy paper, the kind of paper that can take a lot of abuse. Later I begin smearing wet coffee grounds over the paper, in some places rubbing the grounds heavily into the surface and in others letting the wet grounds sit in clumps on top of the paper. I give it a day or so to dry thoroughly and then shake the coffee grounds into the trash. And then I don’t know what to do with this messy, cryptic piece I have begun, so I set it aside. It sits in my studio, propped against a wall, for weeks.

Then another day of anxiety occurs. I want to work on something safe, something that doesn’t matter much, some kind of action to calm my mind. Looking at the messy piece, I notice that one strong curving tea stain dominates the tangle of suggested images formed by my staining and wiping. I take out a brown colored pencil, two shades darker than the stain itself, and begin to trace one edge of the dominant stain. The sweeping line of the stain becomes a bold dimensional shape because of the contrast of the dark pencil line, which forms a kind of shadow illusion. It seems to me that this strong shape wants to be a frame or container for some important element…

A brief excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sunrise” has been ringing in my heart for several days: “What is the name / of the deep breath I would take / over and over / for all of us?” I don’t understand it, but it stays with me. It’s difficult to discern what she means by “deep breath” or why her question is how to name it. But it’s clear that it happens, or must happen, “over and over”—every day, every new moment, for the duration of a life of undetermined length. Whatever the poet meant by these words, to me it speaks of prayer, the attempt to pray despite not knowing how to do it or who might be listening. I find it striking in the context of this poem that the word “spirit” comes from the Latin root spiritus, “breath.” And it touches me that Oliver expresses this desire for an enveloping nurturing gesture in the form of a question. Like the poet herself, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but one moment at a time I continue creating whatever it is, something that I hope will be “for all of us.”

...The bold container shape, then, is there to highlight a word: “breath,” the offering to the tormented world. I write the word in pencil, drawing it reverently as if inscribing the briefest of prayers. But it isn’t enough to have placed it there in the container; it needs to be bolder than the dark line surrounding it. I thread a curved needle with yarn, a dark olive green hue, and sew “breath” onto the paper, following the pencil line. It’s a slow process, piercing the heavy paper with the needle tip and pulling the fibers through, front to back and back to front, one stitch at a time.

I have now reached an uncomfortable crossroads in this work. There is no unifying image in the piece as a whole. How can I unite the strong curving “breath” segment with the rest of the stains and smears? With some trepidation on my part—it’s scary to tear a work-in-progress in half—the piece becomes a diptych… the “breath” segment and a second one with an echoing subtle curve. To this second segment, I add text to clarify “breath”: “deep breath,” followed by “over and over.” This text undergoes the same stitching process as before, using two new colors.

…Other poems have been burning in my consciousness. I search my journals for lines that connect…With colored pencils in various shades of brown and olive, I begin to add text to the diptych. Text becomes texture as I use the words to fill in a space here, to visually extend a line there. If Mary Oliver’s key ideas are the centerpiece of this work, then Adrienne Rich provides the anchor—I carve a slice from her lines and lay it repeatedly across the shape that encloses “breath,” so that breath/spirit and words/communion are intertwined and interdependent.

…I walk around my studio space, picking up one by one natural objects that I have found on long walks—gingko leaves, stones, small metal objects. I pause when I come across a dried hydrangea blossom, the color of a tea stain but perfectly formed. I found it on a walk six months ago and have kept it in my studio ever since, not knowing why it was important. Petals from this blossom become the final addition to the diptych, waterfalling downward. Weeks later, a visitor to my studio tells me that the color of hydrangea blossoms vary, blue or pink, depending on the acidity of the soil.