Ekphrasis XI 2022 Online Exhibition
SET 2. Writer Initiators and Their Visual Artist Responders
D. NATY OSA, Picture Perfect. Response by artist JOSEPH DUVIVIER: Point of View, oil on canvas.
E. MICHELLE BLACKWELL, Excerpts from The Dream Pill. Response by artist MARALEE GREENE: Symbiosis, ceramic figure.
F. NORMA WATKINS, A Room Full of Light. Response by artist Larry Wagner: Choices.
SET 2. Writer Initiators and Their Visual Artist Responders
D. NATY OSA, Picture Perfect. Response by artist JOSEPH DUVIVIER: Point of View, oil on canvas.
E. MICHELLE BLACKWELL, Excerpts from The Dream Pill. Response by artist MARALEE GREENE: Symbiosis, ceramic figure.
F. NORMA WATKINS, A Room Full of Light. Response by artist Larry Wagner: Choices.
Picture Perfect by NATY OSA
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You scan the view and frame the morning: dewdrops, luminescent ladybugs, dot the hostas and like diurnal fireflies, flame and fade in the grass. At the bottom of the slope, an array of trees, shrubbery, a clump of purple iris arrests the eye. Whose hand, here, is the master gardener? |
A stroke of red ‘cross the canvas; insert the bird in the picture insinuate the pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty song, then stride into the frame with a child by your side. Grip his hand tighter, take the next step. |
Response by artist JOSEPH DUVIVIER: Point of View
MICHELLE BLACKWELL, Excerpts from The Dream Pill.
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Sender is walking towards the cross. He can feel the thorns tearing at his skin and the trickling of his life blood on his temples. But he is not concerned. It is not what he imagined when he took the pill. Of course, they warn you, it could be a nightmare as much as a good dream. But he’s still feeling elated that he can walk and move of his own free will, except for the guards. But it is so much better than his regular dreams. So much more control. I really want to fly, he thinks. Doesn’t everyone want to soar over the earth like a hawk? He sees the other two beggars hanging from crosses. Where are their crowns? And just thinking it, the beggars suddenly have crowns. But theirs are made of, what is that? Cicadas. Oh yes, it’s the year of Cicadas. Can’t stand those buggers. I’ll take thorns over Cicadas. As he nears the cross the guards come to a halt. They lay him down and he can feel the hard wood pushing into his spine. Then they strap him and instead of hanging the cross, they carry it away with him on it.
Sender is thrilled that he has this power to navigate with purpose in the dream state. It’s as if all his work in artificial intelligence has transferred into his brain replacing the barrier between consciousness and sleep. The question is how much time does he have left before he must return to the body and how long can it survive without consciousness. |
He gravitates to the roof of the hospital and looks over the parking lot that surrounds it. He leaps off opening his arms wide and feeling the sensation of air flattening the hairs on his chest. He concentrates and yes, he can lift himself on the air currents. He soars higher and circles the buildings. To the north he sees the bay and the baseball park. He uses the currents to join the seagulls, circling over McCovey Cove, while the game plays below. The scattered crowd noise is muted from his advantage. He hears shouts as a ball leaves the park and heads toward the cove. He realizes he is in the path, but hasn’t his power gone past the physical realm. The ball smashes his temple and to his surprise he loses balance, his wings fold and he tumbles toward the cove. The water feels like ice when he enters and it shocks the head pain away. Where did these wings come from? A kayaker is speeding towards the ball and he has to dive to avoid his oar. He swims towards the dock knowing hypothermia could kill him in minutes but the wings slow him down so he imagines fins. The feathers shed and sink into the bay.
Standing in the operating room, Sender sees his body under blue sheets. A surgeon is cutting his scalp with some kind of saw. I should get in there. He lays on the body but nothing happens. He cannot seep into it. Think, what did the instruction booklet say. Let go to return. But how? How do I let go? |
Response by artist MARALEE GREENE: Symbiosis, ceramic figure.
A Room Full of Light by initiating author NORMA WATKINS
Inspired by Michael Hettich’s poem “The Edge of the World”
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Elise sits outside the café with her cappuccino, which has grown a little cold. She likes hot coffee and iced coffee, but warm coffee tastes slightly disgusting. She sips, observing her fellow cafeinómanos y cafeinómanas. Not so many in these days of social distancing.
The girl to her left is here every morning, her hair tied back in a bandana, squinting into her laptop. Her fingernails look ragged and bitten. A cold sore blooms at the left corner of her mouth. Elise pictures the girl’s dark apartment, a mattress on the floor with tangled sheets in need of a wash, the laundromat too far to walk. A job as a waitress; a boyfriend who cheats. More likely, the girl writes code for a startup and makes more in a month than Elise in a year. The man straight ahead sits with his daily bagel and the Wall Street Journal. She watches him break off small pieces of bagel, dabbing each with a smear of cream cheese before popping it into his mouth. She notices how he wipes his mustache after each bite and folds his newspaper neatly into quarters. He |
drinks his tea from a China cup, the used teabag resting wetly in the saucer. She imagines being married to him, the way she’d have to dress and speak, and remember to put the salad fork on the outside. She imagines him in bed with the mustache tickling, enduring proper Republican sex with the lights off and no unseemly noises. Washing up after in separate bathrooms.
Her morning fantasy goes like this: a new man enters the café—or exits with his coffee, since there is no indoor seating. He looks around. “Is this chair taken?” Indicating the one opposite. She shakes her head. He sits, stirs sugar into his coffee and looks up. His eyes are like a door into a room filled with light. Without question or room for doubt, she follows him to a house so perfect she dissolves there, or explodes like the tiny bubbles in a glass of champagne. Francis, her actual husband, pulls out the other chair with an irritating scrape of metal on concrete. He flops into it, his face still creased with sleep. “Did you order for me?” |
Choices by responding photographer LARRY WAGNER.
