Tonight I’m starting with some poetry thoughts. But it gets to visual art soon.
I enjoyed a new adventure recently, taping a Lightning Talk presentation for the SAQA Global Conference. It’s about the lessons of poetry for visual artists.
Lightning talks are short presentations with a very specific format: 20 slides x 20 seconds each = 6 minutes and forty seconds. My PowerPoint is done, the taping is completed, and now I get to sit back with my feet up and listen along with the rest of the audience.
This is one of the slides from my Lightning Talk
I took a wonderful poetry class while I was an undergraduate student and many of the professor’s little bits of wisdom and insights come back to me from time to time. I think my favorite insight deals with meter and structure.
Here’s a short well-known, well-loved poem by Robert Frost to help explain:
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Frost has such a well-developed voice as a writer that you can just imagine him saying these words: a crinkled, wise old man leaning on a fence post, speaking slowly and sharing this memory. His speech would be very natural.
It’s also easy to imagine a school child or the world’s worst poetry reader reading this work aloud getting caught in the sing-song of Frost’s strong meter and obvious rhymes: “Whose Woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though…” La DA dee da la DA dee da, la DA dee da dee da.
What the professor explained is that both voices are actually in there, in the poem, and they are in tension with one another. When you read aloud with a natural voice, not falling into sing-song, you still can’t help but notice the cadence and the rhymes.
I find that when I read poetry for pleasure, I read inside my head as much as possible in a natural, spoken voice. But where there is interesting meter or the existence of rhyme, it adds a dimension, a little bit of extra of richness and interest.
Skilled poets are ones who handle this tension well and use it to enhance their meaning.
Now to visual art.
This is a work-in-progress image of my quilt, Becoming One with the Night. It’s easy to see the structure: squares stitched together in columns and rows.
I wanted that structure under there, but I wanted another layer of experience in the work too.
Becoming One With the Night
My hope is that the underlying structure of squares creates an element to be discovered and appreciated, and that the layers on top made the squares more interesting than they would be alone.
Good structure – compositional devices, elements of design – are important to hold a work together. But, all alone, they are not sufficient to make a work good.
But, without them, the work will not be as strong as it could be.
. . . . .
Don’t forget: If you are near DeLand, Florida this weekend, please stop by the art in the Garden Event sponsored by the Guild of the Museum of Art – DeLand. I’ll be there showing a few large quilts and some new paper collages. I hope to see you there.
My quilt “Becoming One With the Night” is currently in the SAQA Global Exhibit “Beyond the Mirror.’ If you’d like more information about it, it’s on my website HERE.
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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