University of Arizona Poetry Center

SITE-SPECFIC, MIXED MEDIA ART ON VIEW AT THE HELEN S. SCHAEFER BUILDING
by Debby Jo Blank

If you’ve come by the Helen S. Schaefer Building recently you’ve noticed the installation of numerous works of art inside and outside of the Poetry Center. These vibrant mixed media pieces were created by 17 University of Arizona students enrolled in Combining Media, a class taught by Barbara Penn, the current Chair of the 2D Studio Division of Painting, Drawing and Printmaking in the School of Art. The collection ranges from paintings, collage, fiber, glass, sculpture, to a computer web site and video.

Barbara Penn explains that these advanced art students did “ground breaking” work that required them to “think about creating art within an architectural structure with its own theme already in place. They had to push the envelope and take risks. Many of them took their inspiration from the poetry collection.” The class, in its 17th year, has been taught by a core group of rotating faculty. The goal is to “break boundaries and complete site-specific work. It’s good for our students to have a chance to experience their work presented in a public space.”

Bonnie Jean Michalski, the Poetry Center’s Library Assistant, introduced the students to the poetry collection through a questionnaire and an in-depth tour, which included a scavenger hunt. Many of the students were unfamiliar with poetry, but were intrigued by aspects of the collection that reflected their own experience, including Spanish language, gay, and feminist poets.

Julie Duggan’s piece was inspired by the poetry of Rafael Alberti, 1903-1999, from Spain. Alberti was originally a successful painter who belonged to the legendary “Generation of 1927,” which included the painter Salvador Dali, the film maker Luis Bunnel and the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Alberti was exiled from Spain during Franco’s reign due to his sympathies with the Spanish Republic. Julie based her art work on the series of poems written by Alberti on color. “The first poem I read of his is called 'Red' or 'Rojo' and immediately I knew I wanted to do something with this poet’s work. I got the idea to use glass after I read his poem 'White' or 'Blanco.'" She created colored glass sheets etched with her favorite lines from these poems with Spanish on one side and the English on the other. The glass sheets hang within the open niches of the Shelton Wall that runs alongside the east wall of the Poetry Center. Hanging from fish line, they wave and twirl in the wind and the strong colors catch your eye. If you look at them more closely, you can read the snippets of poetry: I wrestle with the green in fruit; I win. I’m fleeing on some canvases: a dove (from “Blanco”). “I had never worked in glass before and had to reach out for help to complete this concept. For example, I researched how to drill the holes in a way that would allow me to hang the individual pieces.” She adds, “This was such an amazing opportunity for all of us to pull together different forms of art media and intertwine them seamlessly …with the inspiring space of the Poetry Center.”

Julie was not the only student inspired by the natural light at the Poetry Center. Lily Dicker-Thompson says, “I knew I wanted to utilize the beautiful space and really play with the light. I went back and forth on the topic until I took a trip to Santa Fe and saw an exhibit on the quilters of Gee’s Bend. That was when I became certain of my topic.” Lily’s piece was installed in the upstairs window area and, explains Barbara Penn, “combines transparent and semi-transparent color, overlays, poems and language dealing with relationship struggles and desires.” The Gee’s Bend quilters are all descendents of four generations of slaves working at the Pettway Plantation in a remote area of southern Alabama. Many of the quilters use Pettway as their surname. An exhibition of sixty-five of these quilts has been shown in major museums across the United States. Lily was inspired to “create some sort of quilt myself. The colors and geometric designs of their quilts look like modern art.” You have to move close to the window to see the poetry and designs in this piece, which is nice because the window itself is a beautiful part of the building, slanted acutely outwards, overlooking the south garden.

Diane Crenshaw created a piece inspired by the book Naming the Waves, a compilation of lesbian poetry. She elaborates, “I was inspired by the honesty and sincerity of their words pertaining to love, their identities and their lives as women. I was particularly touched by Lidija Simkute:

YOU DEPART
But do not let go

Leave the keys
Yet take the door

- from “White Shadows”

I took her poems’ first lines and mixed them up and put back together in a new way and then I painted these new verses on my canvases, some very blurred or even covered by paint and others more readable. My dark blue/black background represents the vast abyss of emotion and the space of self. I hung the five canvases in a fashion to represent a wave. I also tried to represent waves in the shapes, colors and texture of the paintings. Threads in varying blue hues connect the canvases together and these also represent the motion of waves.” These paintings are presented against the corrugated metal wall on the south side of the library reading room.

On the back wall of the library, hidden behind the stacks near a copy machine, is a tapestry made entirely from black pipe cleaners; it is elegant against the charcoal gray wall. Megan Wright, the artist, says of this work, “I was drawn to the poetry of Monica Fambrough. Her work highlights women and I wanted to create a piece that was feminine and discrete like her poems: “It is morning and the women are fearless” (from “Les femmes, Les Fleurs”). The installation also responds to the Poetry Center’s display of framed broadsides that Karla Elling printed for the 1989 Southwest Poetry Festival, published by Mummy Mountain Press, Tempe, Arizona.. These broadsides, which hang near the copier, incorporate black, botanical woodcuts with poems by participating writers such as Richard Shelton, Peggy Shumaker and Alberto Rios. Says Megan, "I chose to expand on this idea…to create a sort of stained-glass look. I also used imagery from the Fambrough poem – flowers, rain, an umbrella, a bra and a coffee cup."

On developing the scavenger hunt to introduce Penn's students to the Poetry Center, Michalski said, “I reformatted the game to focus specifically on art-related aspects of the collection….I asked questions related to the cover or design of a book or about examples in the collection of ekphrasis, the rhetorical device of dramatic or poetic description of a visual work of art."

The Poetry Center has selected nine of the pieces to keep up during the Conceptual Poetry and Its Others Symposium, which will be held at the Center May 29-31. During the several months the artwork resides in the Poetry Center, all of us will be reminded of the close relationship between the visual arts and poetry. The pleasure we take in viewing the art on the walls, in the garden, hanging from the windows and the bookshelves themselves is also a reminder of the wide reaching University environment that provides a context and home for the Poetry Center. We all benefit from the lively interaction among different colleges, school and departments in the University and the sometimes unexpected ways this dialectic enriches our lives.