For this past Open Studio event at the Enriched Bread Artists studios, we invited Grant Wilkins, printer, papermaker, small press publisher and poet in (and of) Ottawa to let himself be inspired by the works, and words, of the EBA artists.
The artists that came forward to have their imagery moulded into letters and sound are: Sarah Anderson, Taylor Boileau Davidson, Patricia Kenny, Juliana McDonald, Christos Pantieras, Mana Rouholamini, Daniel Sharp, Svetlana Swinimer, Joyce Westrop and yours truly.
We sent him images and our “artists’ statement” to work with.
Artist statements. I hate them. They are more often than not a forced, cramped effort to fit into some illusion of what art should be about, using words that are overused yet only half understood. In my personal opinion, artists’ statements are too often a blight onto the work and psyche of the artist involved and it would be good if the art world would do away with them. It would be a happy thing, if artists statements would be simply poetry instead.
But in an art world that is built of smoke and mirrors, the artists statement is both mirror and smoke alike. Many of us need them.
He came up with some wonderful short poems for all of us. He read the colours and assembled the materials, he even threw in a Patti Smith song. He kindly read the poems out for this project. These soundclips as well as the written text can be found on the EBA website here: Poetic Constructions , an Art poetry project by the EBA and Grant Wilkins.
If I might advise you: do listen to the poems. Poetry, already magic when read, works even better when heard.
The poems I would like to highlight here are the poem done for Joyce Westrop, a delightful example of ‘Mesostics’ a style form I was unfamilar with, where he put the name of the artist in a line in the middle and built his words around it.
In his poem for Christos Pantieras’ work, it is as if he rummaged through the heaps of concrete letters and put them on a grid to form his poetry.
In his poem about Mana Rouholamini’s work, the words flow as the ink and the water does in her images.
And lastly, for my oversaturated colours in this oversaturated world he wrote:
Just in case you are now thinking: hey, but what about that Patti Smith song? What does that have to do with this poetry? It was highlighted in Ottawa Life Magazine here.
(The song in question is titled “Horses” and this is the live version that I posted. Our human world is interconnections incarnate: the more connections and associations we make the stronger our soul becomes)
To further ground this project, Grant Wilkins had a conversation with Petra Halkes, an Ottawa based artists, art critic and art writer. The short recap of that conversation -just under 12 minutes- can be found here:
The long version is to be found on the EBA webpage.
This poetry event was one of those instances where the challenges posed by the Covid pandemic to this years Open Studio resulted into a very nice project that otherwise might not have been thought of. I am happy to have been included!