Ekphrasis X 2021 Virtual Exhibition
SET 5. Writer Initiators and their Visual Artist Responders, cont.
O. NORMA WATKINS, Boiling Socks. Response by artist MARY-ELLEN CAMPBELL Soft-boiled, 3D mixed media.
P. MICHELLE BLACKWELL, Mathew Child. Response by ROBERT YELLAND (??????)
Q. DONALD SHEPHARD, Surreal Moments. Response by artist CLAIRE FORTIER: Desolation, oil painting.
SET 5. Writer Initiators and their Visual Artist Responders, cont.
O. NORMA WATKINS, Boiling Socks. Response by artist MARY-ELLEN CAMPBELL Soft-boiled, 3D mixed media.
P. MICHELLE BLACKWELL, Mathew Child. Response by ROBERT YELLAND (??????)
Q. DONALD SHEPHARD, Surreal Moments. Response by artist CLAIRE FORTIER: Desolation, oil painting.
NORMA WATKINS, initiating author: Boiling Socks. Response by artist MARY-ELLEN CAMPBELL Soft-boiled, 3D mixed media.
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Lucy opened the back door. The dark kitchen was filled with steam and smelled of vinegar. With her free hand, she flipped on the light. Her largest soup pot bubbled unattended on the stove. Putting down the sack of groceries, she peered inside. What the …? “Jeremy?”
A grunt from the couch in the living area. “You’re boiling your socks?” A grunt of assent. “Why not use the washing machine?” “Nah.” She looked closer. “Your shoes are in here with them.” “Yeah.” Lucy felt exhausted. A $159 pair of sneakers. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to boil Nike’s.” “S-okay.” Her ears got hot. “If you ruin them, I can’t buy you a new pair.” Another grunt from the couch. She turned the flame down under the pot. “How long do you plan on letting them cook?” “Thirty minutes.” “And then what?” “Put them in the dryer.” She emptied the cloth bag of onions, peppers, canned tomatoes, ground beef, dried pasta. “So the dryer’s okay, but the washer is not?” Silence. Enough to make her want to forget dinner and go straight to bed. “Where did you get this idea?” “Internet.” “Which said?” “Gets the stink out.” “Who says you stink?” She felt insulted for him. “Samantha.” “What’s her nose doing near your feet?” Lucy tried to picture that and shut it out of her mind. “She says we use single-ply toilet paper.” “When was Samantha here?” He wasn’t supposed to have people in the house when she wasn’t home. “She wants to know why you don’t buy me shampoo.” |
Exasperated. “I buy you shampoo. You’re just too lazy to use it.” “She says soap makes my hair stiff.” There’s a girl she’d like to get her hands on. Poking around in other people’s houses. “Tell her to keep her hands out of your hair and her nose out of my bathroom.”
“Why do we?” “What?” Lucy washed her hands and got the cutting board out. “Use single-ply?” “It’s recycled toilet paper.” “Yuck.” “That doesn’t mean someone else has used it, silly. It’s me trying to save the planet.” “What’s for dinner?” She shook her head in exasperation. “Spaghetti when I get my pot back.” Lucy chopped an onion, letting the knife be angry for her. “Can you get me some shampoo?” Lucy shook her head. “Look under the bathroom sink.” “Samantha says I should use the purple stuff.” “The what?” This Samantha needed a good shaking. “Shampoo. To make my hair blonder.” She put the onions in her big skillet and began chopping the green pepper. “When Samantha earns the money to feed you, she can buy you whatever shampoo she wants.” “I’m not going to marry her.” That tickled her—the idea of this useless lump marrying anyone. “What are you doing on that computer?” She saw the glow from over the couch. “English homework.” “Such as?” Talking to the boy was like getting blood out of a turnip. “An essay.” “On what?” “How to bug your mother by boiling your socks.” |
Response by artist MARY-ELLEN CAMPBELL Soft-boiled, 3D mixed media.
Initiating author, MICHELLE BLACKWELL:
A Eulogy for Matthew Child
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Matthew on point balanced on the back of a folding metal chair. The kind ubiquitous in school auditoriums and church halls. The chair, one of many scattered across the stage. He leapt from the back of one chair to the next, jumped into an acrobatic roll as the final chair folded into itself and clattered to the floor. The staccato of metal bouncing on wood timed to Thelonious Monk.
I sat in the darkened theater awed. I had been warned his dance was Avant guard. My date introduced me to his old friend and fellow performer. He doesn’t shake hands. He puts his leg over your arm Harpo style. A tribute from one original to another. A faulty ladder, a fall four stories from a roof he had scaled to supplement his artist’s income ended his dance. A dent the size of a hand ball, where his scalp met his forehead. Dinner in Berkeley at a long table littered with musicians and dancers, their families and friends in our favorite restaurant. It was before or after the instant composer’s concert. The waitress overwhelmed—Matthew jumps up, grabs the water pitchers and proceeds to fill our glasses. |
At our home for a concert, Matthew leaves early. Crowds and bright sunshine overwhelm him. He has good and bad days.
Dinner with him and his wife. A fascinating actress who flew over from England to care for him-keeping his mystique alive. A fiftieth birthday bash full of characters and dreamers, dancers and players and me, their audience. Decline. The phone rings unanswered. His wife gone — a deep love drowned in hopelessness. A player’s reunion on the coast. We pick him up in Berkeley. He hasn’t bathed. His descent untethered. I should have been more gracious. No contact. Matthew, a child to the end. He gave us glimpses of what we wished we could have been. |
Response by ROBERT YELLAND: Acrobat, mixed media.
Initiatiing author DONALD SHEPHARD: Surreal Moments
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Wind whips an old man who leans on two sticks as he shuffles around to peer over the desolate landscape. He slips into the past and sees footprints across endless sand dunes and ridges of ash. The hillock at the southernmost horizon merges, black against black, indistinguishable from the storm clouds above, except when lightning illuminates his view. In his mind's eye, he sees on the uphill slope among the ruins of war, the waddling footsteps of a woman about to give birth. Her writhing erases the imprints and blood cakes the ground into a shallow purple depression. Descending the ash ridge, her son's precious first, faltering toddles accompany her from incendiary bomb inferno to underground shelter.
The mother’s pace slows to keep time with her son and his three siblings. An ankle-deep groove marks five sets of footsteps trudging from the shallow nest to the underground bunker. They do not deviate from the rut until joined by the larger and sunken impressions of a man carrying a heavy load home from the war. Eventually, the trudge marks leave the rubble and ascend a grand sand dune. The smaller marks meander, crisscrossing the dune, climbing the windward side stumble step by stumble step and tumbling roly-poly down the leeward slope. Tracks radiate from the edge of the dune where the sand mingles with cinders. Here the boy's indentations stray onto a solitary path. They climb the steep side of the ash ridge and frequently tumble down again. A tantrum of kick marks mars each place he falls. As the heel-less sole-prints grow, so the stride lengthens and it is apparent that the youth runs. In many places, massed athletes leave vast flattened areas which taper into well-worn tracks. Once, the boy's cleat marks arrive first at the finishing line and the old heart flutters in remembered glory. |
The young man’s tracks scale up and down the ridges and sometimes stray onto nearby dunes, where dainty young footprints approach. Increasingly, the widespread toe marks of a peasant girl parallel the youth’s path. Sometimes the foot shapes match toe-to-toe. Where their bodies snuggle side-by-side, the sand radiates summer heat.
A tot's tentative steps join the parallel footprints before they slide down the bank of sand. Two more sets of miniature bipeds accompany the family before beginning a struggle over alternating ash and sand. A deep rut between ridge and dune suggests they carry an imposing burden. As the three youthful tracks veer from those of the parents, the ash gives way to sand and the sky clears. The footprints now matched in stride, set deeper into the ground, and no longer run, jump or skip. They stop here and there as if admiring bright yellow sand verbena, listening to a Raven crackle, or watching a dust-devil dance. The peasant woman's impressions end in a pit at the border of sand and ash. The other images, stationary for a long time, limp forward onto the final northernmost mountain of ashes, where knee marks on the slope follow a change in gait. An arc drags from one right footstep to the next, each indentation close to its successor. Toward the end of the path through the ash, a row of stick holes parallels the faltering prints. Here, at the steepest part of the slag heap, lies a six-feet deep hole. The old man slips into his grave and desiccates to dust. Above his remains, an ironic smile hovers, scans the paths from birth to death and faces the unknowable, trackless void. |
Response by artist CLAIRE FORTIER: Desolation, oil painting.
