Ekphrasis XII 2023 Online Exhibition
SET 1. Writer Initiators and Visual Artist Responders
A. DONALD SHEPHARD, "The Great Catsby." Response by painter ROBERT YELLAND: Catsby
B. windflower, "life flowing out." Response by artist KAREN FENLEY: Portal.
C. PETER NASH, "Hopscotch." Responder 1, photographer LARRY R. WAGNER: Quantum Leap.
Responder 2, artist PAT SCOTT: Pinpoint of Existence.
Intro Set 2 Set 3 Set 4 Set 5 Set 6 Afterword
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A. "The Great Catsby"
initiated by DONALD SHEPHARD. |
A. Response by ROBERT YELLAND:
Catsby |
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Gallery Book Store’s Great Catsby Looks handsome with paw-white spats He is clever and bright With one source of fright His dastardly nemesis Old Ratsby |
Oil painting
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B. Initial poem by windflower
"life flowing out" We long to make music that melts the stars human speech a cracked kettle hammering us forward holding us back silently spinning its shadowy web piece by piece crumb by crumb one day following another spring on winter an autumn after summer a weight quivering with every wind in every cranny of the heart waiting for something to happen something always remains stars melting into music the memory of it Found Poem words and phrases from “Madame Bovary” |
B. Responding artist, KAREN FENLEY: Portal
Mixed media, 16sx20 in.
Statement by Karen Fenley: The poem inspired by Mdm Bovary seemed a longing for a sublime experience and the desire to repeat that experience. |
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C. PETER NASH: "Hopscotch"
When I was a boy a girl would chalk a game of hopscotch on the asphalt playground of St. Agnes Elementary School. Behind her on the blacktop a giggling cluster of girls waited their turn to hop hop and leap to where she landed balancing as on the wings of an eagle, cheering her, secretly hoping one of her feet would touch a line and she’d have to take her place behind the others. I played dodgeball and kickball, kicking and screaming with the boys, afraid I’d be called a sissy for playing hopscotch. |
Hopscotch, devised by Alexander the Great to bolster the strength and agility
of his Macedonian foot soldiers in laced leather leggings, rawhide armor, and iron helmets blue as hyacinth as they pillaged Illyria, burning hayfields, slaughtering cattle, and leaping from one terrified farm girl to the next, a practice illustrating the Buddhist belief in bardho, the pinpoint of existence between death and life, insanity and sanity, bar meaning in between, dho meaning island or mark, like jumping across the river from stone to stone, dho to dho, ultimately pitching into the water when the space between two stones is longer than you can leap. |
C. Response 1 by photographer LARRY R. WAGNER: Quantum Leap
Photo collage on aluminum, 15 x 20 in.
LARRY's Comments: The last verse of "Hopscotch" captured my imagination. Life is always a leap into the unknown. I immediately thought of a photo shoot I had done with Callie where I caught her in an incredible leap on the beach, and transposed it to our wild Mendocino Coast surf.
C. Response 2 to "Hopscotch" by Peter Nash. Peter's writing, above the photograph, also was sent to artist PAT SCOTT. The two responses, one by LARRY WAGNER (above) and one by PAT SCOTT are interesting to compare. Pat's Word Art Pinpoint of Existence and explanation are here, with the comments below the image:
Mixed Media (photoshop and colored pencils) 15" X 11.5"
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Inspired by the last paragraph, defining “bardho, the pinpoint of existence" between life and death, sanity and insanity, I saw a parallel in a NOAA graph showing global warming. In this image, “bar” means between now and the projected limit of 1.5 C rise in temperature, and “dho” the ultimate destination to which we can no longer leap as the temperature keeps rising and earth burns and oceans die.
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The underlying graph shows yearly global surface temperature compared to the average from 1880–2020. Blue bars indicate cooler-than-average years; red bars show warmer-than-average years. (NOAA Climate.gov graph, based on data from the National Centers for Environmental Information.)
Note the years of World War II in the 1940’s where there is sudden rise in temperature. And so it continues after a brief period of peace….. P.S.
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