ARTISTS' CO-OP OF MENDOCINO
  • Welcome !
  • Artists
    • Monthly Sampler
    • Photography >
      • Shanti Balsé
      • Sharon Garner
      • Pat Toth-Smith
    • Painting, Printmaking, Drawing, Multimedia >
      • Mary T. Anderson
      • Shanti Benoit
      • Karen Bowers
      • Laura Corben
      • David L. Cross
      • Joseph DuVivier
      • Stephen Garner
      • Debra Lennox
      • Karen Embree Reynolds
      • Robert Spies
      • Lynne Whiting
      • Robert Yelland (paintings)
      • Lynne Zickerman Olson
    • Jewelry, Sculpture, Ceramics, other 3D Art >
      • Jim Cowles
      • Maralee Greene (ceramics)
      • Robert Spies Sculpture
      • Robert Yelland (jewelry)
    • Guest Artists >
      • Lynne Butler (Ceramics)
      • Sev Ickes (Joyous Scenes)
      • Wendell Rickon (Upcycle Woodwork)
      • Robert Spies Sculpture
  • About Us
    • Find and Contact Us
    • Information, Calendar, Kudo
  • Exhibitions
    • Current Featured Artist
    • Online Exhibitions >
      • Selected Conundrums
      • Ekphrasis IX 2020 Exhibition
      • Ekphrasis XII 2023 Exhibition
      • Ekphrasis X 2021 Exhibition
      • Heart and Flowers
      • Ekphrasis XI 2022 Exhibition >
        • Marine Mendocino
        • Transitions
        • Collaborative Collages
      • Ekphrasis XIII 2024 Exhibition
  • ArtNotes
Ekphrasis XII 2023 Online Exhibition

SET 6. Visual Artist Initiators and their Writer Responders

Q. LAURA CORBEN, Mercy.  Response by poet MAUREEN EPPSTEIN: "We Knew".
R. PAT TOTH-SMITH, Bear Cub Brothers.  Response by author HOLLY TANNEN: "Benjie"
S. ROBERT SPIES, Untitled. Response by author SUSAN FISHER: "The Minotaur Comes at Night"
T. JOSEPH DUVIVIER, Journey's End. Response by author BILL MANN: ​"Human Meteorite Haiku" 
Intro   Set 1   Set 2   Set 3   Set 4   Set 5   Afterword

​Q. Initiating artist LAURA CORBEN:
Mercy
​
Picture
Acrylic on canvas, 8x16 in
Q. Response by poet MAUREEN EPPSTEIN:

We Knew
                                    --after Jane Hirshfield
But paid no attention
                                              far away words
pollution        deforestation        global warming
 
our comfortable lives
         not to be disrupted        not to be changed
 
And so
 
The house where 
 
The street-hum
 
The bar where my jazz band
 
The house where my lover    
                      my lover             my lover
 
Vast silences
Stench of smoke
 
Cinders drop like black grief
 

​                                                        -- Maureen Eppstein

R. Bear Cub Brothers 
by Initiator Photographer Pat Toth-Smith
​
Picture


​


R. Response by songwriter HOLLY TANNEN: 
"Benjie"
​
We have a bear. Three bears. No, not those three bears. 
            I haven’t seen any bears yet, but I’ve seen Karen Reynolds’ painting of a mother bear and two cubs crossing Nichols Lane.
            “They were here first,” says my landmate. “It’s their territory.”
            C&S Waste Solutions will let you have a bear-resistant trash can and charge you $110.97 a month to empty it. I wrap my compost in plastic, put it in the freezer, and get up at 6:00 am on Wednesdays to carry it out to the garbage can, which I lug to the top of the road and cover with Pine-Sol. So far, I’ve been spared the bears, but Little Lake Road is littered (sorry) with overturned trash cans and strewn food wrappers.
            I think it’s the mother bear. She probably left the cubs in a pine tree:
            
            “I wanna climb down, wanna climb down
            Wanna climb down this tree.
            Wanna climb down and root on the ground
            Willya climb down with me?”
            
             “I won’t go ’cause Mama said no,
             Gotta stay here in the tree.
             Won’t climb down, there’s people on the ground
             Gunnin’ for you and me.”
 
            “Gonna climb down, gonna climb down 
            Gonna climb down this tree.
            Mom’s got peanut butter on the ground
            Better give some to me.”
Holly's comments: I imagine the mother bear lumbering back to the tree and feeding her cubs peanut butter or milk.
Could this be the bear who’s been getting into the dumpster –– the “bear bar,” as the naturalists call it ––  at the Mendocino Woodlands? 
            After three years when we dared not meet, Lark Camp is happening again at the Woodlands. Irish pipes and whistles, fiddle, nykelharpa, Cajun accordion, hurdy-gurdy, oud, bouzouki, doumbek, dulcimer. At night, campers in down jackets sit around the fire to tell jokes, drink chai, and sing. I start a round I learned years ago. 
            It was the day after Lark and we were heading back to everyday life. We had to leave camp by 9:00 am, so traditionally, we’d all go for coffee at the Bakery. Afterwards, my friends and I drove to the headlands to look at the ocean. We sat together on the Poets’ Bench and sang:​

            Benjie met the bear, the bear met Benjie
            The bear was bulgy, the bulge was Benjie


S. Initiating artist ROBERT SPIES: Untitled​, monoprint.

Picture

​S. Response by author SUSAN FISHER: ​
"The Minotaur Comes at Night"
​

​
The Minotaur comes at night when my working eyes are folded away on the bedside table. I see swirling ribbons of darkness in every shade of gray and black, and within that kinetic movement, a form can be made out: a massive horned head with black holes for eyes, powerful limbs attached to a hunched and muscled torso, bared animalistic teeth ready to tear. It is hungry.
If I turn on my lamp, the beast is gone. As soon as I stare into darkness from my bed, it reappears. The Minotaur travels, following me from one residence to another over decades. I believe I knew it as a child; I’d beg to go to my mother’s bed for safety. 
As I age, my monster throws out tiny sparks like shooting stars. Is it given life only by electrical impulses in my brain? Or is the ancient Minotaur waiting, waiting, waiting to gobble me up?



T.  Initiating Artist JOSEPH DUVIVIER:
Journey's End
​
Picture

​
T. Response by poet BILL MANN:

HUMAN METEORITE HAIKU

Nothing erases
this humongous blight, crashing
what once was pristine.


​
This is Set 6. Click to go to   Intro   Set 1   Set 2   Set 3   Set 4   Set 5  Afterword
Picture
Sign  up for our monthly ArtNotes newsletter.
​@2014 Artists' Cooperative of Mendocino, Inc.
​                           All rights reserved.

Artists’ Co-op of Mendocino Gallery 
​Located NW corner of Kasten and Albion Sts.

(707) 937-2217    
USmail:  Box 1943, Mendocino CA 95460
(mail is not delivered to the street address)
Go to the website:  www.artcoopmendocino.com 
To contact the Co-op email  [email protected]
​To contact the webmaster, 
enter "attn webmaster" on the subject line
  • Welcome !
  • Artists
    • Monthly Sampler
    • Photography >
      • Shanti Balsé
      • Sharon Garner
      • Pat Toth-Smith
    • Painting, Printmaking, Drawing, Multimedia >
      • Mary T. Anderson
      • Shanti Benoit
      • Karen Bowers
      • Laura Corben
      • David L. Cross
      • Joseph DuVivier
      • Stephen Garner
      • Debra Lennox
      • Karen Embree Reynolds
      • Robert Spies
      • Lynne Whiting
      • Robert Yelland (paintings)
      • Lynne Zickerman Olson
    • Jewelry, Sculpture, Ceramics, other 3D Art >
      • Jim Cowles
      • Maralee Greene (ceramics)
      • Robert Spies Sculpture
      • Robert Yelland (jewelry)
    • Guest Artists >
      • Lynne Butler (Ceramics)
      • Sev Ickes (Joyous Scenes)
      • Wendell Rickon (Upcycle Woodwork)
      • Robert Spies Sculpture
  • About Us
    • Find and Contact Us
    • Information, Calendar, Kudo
  • Exhibitions
    • Current Featured Artist
    • Online Exhibitions >
      • Selected Conundrums
      • Ekphrasis IX 2020 Exhibition
      • Ekphrasis XII 2023 Exhibition
      • Ekphrasis X 2021 Exhibition
      • Heart and Flowers
      • Ekphrasis XI 2022 Exhibition >
        • Marine Mendocino
        • Transitions
        • Collaborative Collages
      • Ekphrasis XIII 2024 Exhibition
  • ArtNotes