From August, 2010
I dream often of the ocean, of waves I can never see beneath.
The other night I dreamt of you.
I told you "It's over," and you held on to me.
I might, deep down, be holding on to you too.
And you saw that! I know that you saw
behind my stone wall of calm words and logic.
Logic that says we have to let go.
I know you saw me,
saw me,
because your face shifted.
Your eyes kindly placed each stone on the ground,
coaxed my lips into yours,
and reminded me that I can never build a wall you cannot see behind.
Then we walked in different directions into the night.
All this has led me to a wooden porch with dried garlic hanging by the windows.
Inside, a bed is made for me,
and a grandmother waits with so much love in her eyes
the whole world must feel it.
The shelves are lined with poems.
There are blueberry fields out back.
I am thinking of you, and how you hate poems.
You are thinking of me.
Maybe we are even looking into each other's faces again.
Maybe we are sitting on that stone wall again and cars are driving by.
Maybe we are out at sea, treading water, unable to hold on to each other.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Nine Peaches
Walking through the door
of Kathlyn’s family cabin,
we flick on the lights.
Nine round peaches
sit atop the counter before us.
A bag of croissants, too,
brought back from Paris this week
by Kathlyn’s mother.
The whole world is represented
in tapestries, baskets,
ceramics, paintings
all carefully placed.
But the peaches are from here,
Georgia,
where Kathlyn comes back to rest.
She lives in Nairobi now.
She has been seeing turtles lately
She has been seeing turtles lately
and wonders if they are a sign.
She’s seen them born,
climbing out of their shells
moving towards the ocean
across a beach they will return to
when they have their own babies.
Their bodies know.
She’s met one almost 200 years old.
A female, Mary,
who swam across the Indian Ocean
to show up on the island of Lamu
where she’s witnessed colonialism
and the 21stcentury.
Her body knows.
Mary once moved across a beach
just born
trying to make it to the ocean
when many of the others around her
wouldn’t.
And here she is.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Mini Memoir revisited
My three siblings and I, all born a year apart, put our pillows in the freezer on summer nights.
Free from school, we would stay up past our bedtime
jumping on the king size trampoline bed in my parent's room.
There was a window unit that blew cold ac into the room
until it became an oasis within the hot house.
After a bath, my mother would weave my wet hair into a french braid down my back.
I wore my dad's billowy t-shirts to bed,
but some nights after the beach, just my swimsuit,
dragging sand into my sheets with me.
I spent much of the summertime playing at Upham Beach
until the sky bled fuchsia onto a flat Gulf of Mexico.
I think I have loved Upham Beach since before I was born
on the twenty seventh day in June, 1989.
No matter how far I wander,
that warm water is closer to me than my skin.
Free from school, we would stay up past our bedtime
jumping on the king size trampoline bed in my parent's room.
There was a window unit that blew cold ac into the room
until it became an oasis within the hot house.
After a bath, my mother would weave my wet hair into a french braid down my back.
I wore my dad's billowy t-shirts to bed,
but some nights after the beach, just my swimsuit,
dragging sand into my sheets with me.
I spent much of the summertime playing at Upham Beach
until the sky bled fuchsia onto a flat Gulf of Mexico.
I think I have loved Upham Beach since before I was born
on the twenty seventh day in June, 1989.
No matter how far I wander,
that warm water is closer to me than my skin.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Cathedral
She is slight, my sister,
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
She and her friends embrace strong and quick,
then line up at the bar for class.
An observation window sits above the white dance room, their sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French
and the pianist is invisible.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.”
My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Spectators group at the window
floating above the studio, above the streets of Boston.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take away a portion of beauty for themselves.
There is beauty to every person.
Some, however,
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own and are perfect. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
She and her friends embrace strong and quick,
then line up at the bar for class.
An observation window sits above the white dance room, their sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French
and the pianist is invisible.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.”
My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Spectators group at the window
floating above the studio, above the streets of Boston.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take away a portion of beauty for themselves.
There is beauty to every person.
Some, however,
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own and are perfect. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.
Mini-memoir
When I was seven lightning struck the brick road in front of my house. Yellow caution tape surrounded the hole and my mom told me not to go near. When I did, the bricks gave way under my feet. My arms caught the ground, suspending my body above the dark sewer system. Stunned, I pulled myself out and slipped into our house through the side door. I jumped, fully clothed, into the shower in my dad's half bathroom to clean the mud off my body before anyone saw.My dad's father had our house built when it was time for him to raise a family. He worked for Florida Power, and I've been told my block is the last to keep electricity in the event of a natural disaster. My grandma told me that no one really lived in St. Petersburg until air conditioning was invented. This made me feel like I had a heat resilience super power since my family's house didn't have central heat and air until I was ten. On summer nights my three siblings and I, all born a year apart, would put our pillows in the freezer. We stayed up wearing billowy shirts, jumping around on the trampoline bed in my parents' room, which became an oasis when when they turned on the a.c. unit in their window. That cold, along with the braid my mother would pleat down my hair after a bath, are some of the most poignant sensations of my childhood. I felt a certain ownership of summer because I was born in June. My family didn't have a pool, but we made use of those owned by friends or waterfront hotels. At night I would fall asleep in my bed still wearing my bathing suit so I could wake up and go right back to a pool or Upham beach. Two places I have been since my first week of life are church and Upham beach. The warm gulf water was as close to me as my skin and when I moved to Baltimore for college I looked for a place to swim for months. I didn't find one, but the ocean never left my sleep; it is the only reoccurring dream my subconscious has held on to.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Self Portrait
I am
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Poems of Establishing Identity and Transitioning into Adulthood (Written January - April 2009)
Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," verse 22:
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________
I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________
I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________
God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________
My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________
Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________
soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________
Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________
Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________
I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.
One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.
When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.
Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.
Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________
Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________
Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________
No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________
When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________
I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________
Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________
I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________
I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________
Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________
The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________
I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________
I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________
Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________
Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________
In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________
I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________
I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________
I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________
I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________
God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________
My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________
Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________
soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________
Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________
Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________
I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.
One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.
When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.
Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.
Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________
Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________
Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________
No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________
When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________
I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________
Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________
I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________
I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________
Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________
The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________
I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________
I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________
Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________
Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________
In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________
I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________
I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Stephanie's Daily Affirmations
Scrawled this down after a recent conversation with Jon.
Put the scrap of paper on the back of my door.
They may particularly strike a chord with fellow college graduates trying to figure out how to do life now.
"Take it one step at a time.
Be here.
It is enough, so enjoy it.
Appreciate what you've done and what you are doing.
And never forget, the point of it all is to love people."
More daily affirmations
Put the scrap of paper on the back of my door.
They may particularly strike a chord with fellow college graduates trying to figure out how to do life now.
"Take it one step at a time.
Be here.
It is enough, so enjoy it.
Appreciate what you've done and what you are doing.
And never forget, the point of it all is to love people."
More daily affirmations
Monday, December 13, 2010
Returning
Getting to South Africa took
many papers.
Today they are in the trash.
My bedroom has changed little since
leaving and
the house
is quiet.
I don't know how I like my tea anymore.
Where can I go to remember myself?
The church, the mall,
a book, a meal,
my studio, my music,
running down the road?
Instead of myself,
I find new life
sprouting from
return to old ritual:
pen to page,
paint to canvas,
knife to carrots and cucumbers,
the walk down the driveway in the morning
where Americans are
the most important
war casualties to be announced.
Monday, October 25, 2010
White
I was born with skin shown in my country's history
I see it on the band-aids and faces of dollbabies
I see it on the runways, in glossy magazines
See-it on the CEOs and on celebrities
my skin wont make you question
my self-sufficiency
to almost all the world
my skin looks like money
almost never represents illiteracy
born into the skin of learnin capacity.
I dont speak for my race
when speakin just for me
but I like to think
about this one reality:
when walking down your road
on the bottom of my feet
my souls can turn into the hue
of all humanity.
Leaves
Every night I run home crying
because I think the trees are dying.
Dad holds me close as he explains
how leaves must fall when seasons change.
But I am not yet one year old
and can't understand what I'm being told.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Summer
Summer lives
in a peach colored house
with fishing poles
against the wall.
Summer bikes
with mosquito-bit legs,
plays scratch-off cards
and volleyball.
Summer's sister is
on a date.
her brother
works on his car.
Crickets whir and
twighlight comes
from the middle
of their yard.
Her mother tucks
the ocean in.
Her father turns
the soil.
Sweat shines
from her brother's brow.
He smells of salt
and motor oil.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
An Allegory
One day
you forget the locker combination
you've used for the last five years.
You try hundreds of numbers
and then give up
because you have forgotten
what you are looking for.
When you remember
you go back.
The locker doors swing open
and five years of drawings spill out.
The one you wanted
is the only one
not there.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Dad
When I was a baby, my mom tells me
it was him who walked my small sobbing body around
the house at two am.
He's always done the dishes at night and
he coached my p.e. class in pre-school. He doesn't talk much, but
last winter when I came home the house was warm and
glowing, and very clean, which is not usually the case.
He was there waiting for me, in the threadbare grey shirt
he's always worn to bed.
He gave me a kiss on the cheek,
kind of discreet, and he smelled like soap.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Interior monologue from 2008
You know what's important? Living with passion - that's what's important. If I died tonight, I'd want people to know that I feel strongly about this matter - I feel like I have no other option but to suck the marrow out of life - every single day. Painting like you don't need to sleep - that's important. Singing loud- being moved by a song - that's important. Feeling. I mean really feeling - have you ever really... felt? Do you know what it's like? I do. It's like being invincible. It's like the whole world and its rules are walls around you and they collapse. Petals on a flower, opening up until they're splayed out flat. And it's a welling inside your chest, and you're really excited for some reason, and you're pretty sure that that reason is just the fact that you're alive - and i mean really alive. And can I tell you something? Something kind of candid? ...It's God is what it is. It can't be words, or paint or music or singing because it's essentially God. It's that thing that everyone always expresses as "unable to describe with words," and I gotta say - it's really spiritual, man. To me, it's just God welling inside my chest sometimes.
Sometimes I just gotta say stuff, so if I die tomorrow, it's out...and that's scary, but no matter how many hours I'm alive, my whole life will ultimately be a drop in the ocean. Whether my life is eighteen or eighty years, it's still small. Therefore, waking up and living a day - I mean being able to be alive - is definitely not something to be timid about. It's not something to be taken lightly. It's all you really have.
Sometimes I just gotta say stuff, so if I die tomorrow, it's out...and that's scary, but no matter how many hours I'm alive, my whole life will ultimately be a drop in the ocean. Whether my life is eighteen or eighty years, it's still small. Therefore, waking up and living a day - I mean being able to be alive - is definitely not something to be timid about. It's not something to be taken lightly. It's all you really have.
Bits from a freshman year notebook:
-"Be clear minded and self controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."
-Here's what I like: Grahm crackers. Here's what else I like: cold, cold water and sun warmth.
-"How can something not have meaning? Everything has meaning. Even lying in bed, putting the blinds down, sleeping in, and not talking to anyone has meaning."
-I kind of like mess ups.
-If a piece of art doesn't respect the audience's mind, I won't give it the time of day.
-Abstract concepts seem obscene as we pass alongside places we've destroyed in war.
-Here we are in our ivory tower, learning about art...
-Religion has become domesticated. Marx called it the opiate of the masses. It just feels good.
-communication isn't always easy.
-Oh how complicated
we've made it all out to be,
truth, religion,
spirituality...
-This is the first morning in months where I've had nothing to do. It's like something I knew long ago...
-Is geometry idealistic?
-Color is the lifeblood of painting.
-Prayer is moving the hand of God. Prayer is where ministry happens (cause we, as humans, sure don't do it.)
-To look is superficial. To see is to perceive.
-"Don't compartmentalize - divisions don't always serve you. Why say 'this is my work' and 'this isn't'?"
- I heard the saddest thing today -
"I don't like the sun."
"Why?"
"It burns."
How can you live life that way?
(There's something about the sun that tells me today is good.)
-"He looked at her like she might may be magic."
-People should never be treated as a means; they are always an end.
-Half asleep and half awake makes for a very painful day...
-It's healthy to have conversations with different kinds of people and thinkers.
-We tend to break things down into binaries. There is more than binaries. There is complexity.
-At art school we challenge and then change culture. We always think critically as artists. Is this something I want to spend the rest of my life doing? It is important to analyze myself and why I make decisions.
-You know what's crazy? Some people spend their whole life never figuring out who they are.
-Art is no less then philosophy - they dally with the same questions.
-"I've been tryin for years to grow up."
"Don't do it."
"I won't."
"Good."
-Light is the most significant thing to ever happen.
-Can the piece of art answer the questions it raises about itself? You are in charge of the way your work exists in the world and is interpreted by people.
-Calculation. Let go. Let the poet, the dreamer in you take hold it it.
- We are performers. We are communicators. Our job is to communicate. To leave the impression of our soul on the viewer.
- Make a list of ten things that you like. Your art should have at least 3-5 of this in it, or else, why do it?
-Do or do not. There is no try.
-Here's what I like: Grahm crackers. Here's what else I like: cold, cold water and sun warmth.
-"How can something not have meaning? Everything has meaning. Even lying in bed, putting the blinds down, sleeping in, and not talking to anyone has meaning."
-I kind of like mess ups.
-If a piece of art doesn't respect the audience's mind, I won't give it the time of day.
-Abstract concepts seem obscene as we pass alongside places we've destroyed in war.
-Here we are in our ivory tower, learning about art...
-Religion has become domesticated. Marx called it the opiate of the masses. It just feels good.
-communication isn't always easy.
-Oh how complicated
we've made it all out to be,
truth, religion,
spirituality...
-This is the first morning in months where I've had nothing to do. It's like something I knew long ago...
-Is geometry idealistic?
-Color is the lifeblood of painting.
-Prayer is moving the hand of God. Prayer is where ministry happens (cause we, as humans, sure don't do it.)
-To look is superficial. To see is to perceive.
-"Don't compartmentalize - divisions don't always serve you. Why say 'this is my work' and 'this isn't'?"
- I heard the saddest thing today -
"I don't like the sun."
"Why?"
"It burns."
How can you live life that way?
(There's something about the sun that tells me today is good.)
-"He looked at her like she might may be magic."
-People should never be treated as a means; they are always an end.
-Half asleep and half awake makes for a very painful day...
-It's healthy to have conversations with different kinds of people and thinkers.
-We tend to break things down into binaries. There is more than binaries. There is complexity.
-At art school we challenge and then change culture. We always think critically as artists. Is this something I want to spend the rest of my life doing? It is important to analyze myself and why I make decisions.
-You know what's crazy? Some people spend their whole life never figuring out who they are.
-Art is no less then philosophy - they dally with the same questions.
-"I've been tryin for years to grow up."
"Don't do it."
"I won't."
"Good."
-Light is the most significant thing to ever happen.
-Can the piece of art answer the questions it raises about itself? You are in charge of the way your work exists in the world and is interpreted by people.
-Calculation. Let go. Let the poet, the dreamer in you take hold it it.
- We are performers. We are communicators. Our job is to communicate. To leave the impression of our soul on the viewer.
- Make a list of ten things that you like. Your art should have at least 3-5 of this in it, or else, why do it?
-Do or do not. There is no try.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Travel
Trees sprint back, back and back
us three barrel forward
our time capsule compact
music ricochets
off of the glass
Shakespeare's words
rest in my lap
Arrows in bows
tightly pulled back
Now, in a minute
turns into past.
Schwing!
Bound Home
Salt water falls
on unfamiliar
windowpanes.
Swells of
green wallpaper waves
surround
and drown.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Artist Statement
As a community artist in inner city Baltimore, my work seeks to surface and discuss issues revolving around urban social and racial divides, both physical and perceived. I work both collaboratively and independently.
My collaborative work consists of portraiture, video, and public murals, most often painted in Baltimore City schools. I work collaboratively because I believe that the city’s residents hold the creative solutions to Baltimore’s social problems. I work collaboratively because I believe art and culture are as important to a society as any physical need. I work collaboratively because it fosters ethnic diversity and multiculturalism by building an environment of tolerance and respect.
My independent work moves fluidly between drawing, painting and poetry. The technique of my charcoal drawings is inspired by Seurat’s drawings. They depict people holding each other and are about relationships of dependency. My oil paintings are often introspective self-portraits, painted from life with a limited palette of white, burnt umber, yellow ochre and ultramarine blue. Reoccurring images in my paintings are glasses of water, circles, compositions of colored paper, and dramatic lighting.
My community and independent work could not exist without my writing. I continuously express my relationship with Baltimore through a series of poems about the city. My writing includes just as much of my community and myself as the images I make.
My collaborative work consists of portraiture, video, and public murals, most often painted in Baltimore City schools. I work collaboratively because I believe that the city’s residents hold the creative solutions to Baltimore’s social problems. I work collaboratively because I believe art and culture are as important to a society as any physical need. I work collaboratively because it fosters ethnic diversity and multiculturalism by building an environment of tolerance and respect.
My independent work moves fluidly between drawing, painting and poetry. The technique of my charcoal drawings is inspired by Seurat’s drawings. They depict people holding each other and are about relationships of dependency. My oil paintings are often introspective self-portraits, painted from life with a limited palette of white, burnt umber, yellow ochre and ultramarine blue. Reoccurring images in my paintings are glasses of water, circles, compositions of colored paper, and dramatic lighting.
My community and independent work could not exist without my writing. I continuously express my relationship with Baltimore through a series of poems about the city. My writing includes just as much of my community and myself as the images I make.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
"It is Overwhelming to Behold"
Music and male voice by Christian McKee.
Female Voice, Poem, and Video by Stephanie McKee.
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