I want to send you an image from one of my favorite artists, Ivan
Albright. As a teenager, his work fascinated me (and it continues to do
so and to inspire many ekphrastic poems). I was captivated by how his
surfaces were roiling and bubbling, splitting and blistering. Much was
going on unseen (just as it was within me then and still is now). I was
taken by the fact that he spent years, even a decade, on a single
work. That spoke to an obsessiveness and a fierce fidelity to his own
vision that I hoped to find within me as well as I undertook my own
creative tasks. Also, many people find his works repellent as his
humans and the worlds they inhabit look wrecked or diseased. In
contrast, I took (and take) comfort from this. It is from our wreckage
that we create. It is from disease that we heal (or die and change).
This
painting, "That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door)" was
the one that took him a decade to paint. It hangs in the Chicago Museum
of Art. It is worthy of a pilgrimage.
your invitation:
tell me or show me one thing. it doesn’t have to be profound. it could be visual or written or a combo of both. it could be about your work; it could be an artefact or a glitch, a link to some film or tv show you’ve watched or a coffee place you like. it could be short or long. i’ll post it along with a link of your choice to your work or somewhere else. disclaimer: i might choose not to post if it doesn’t suit me.
your reward? send me your mailing address & i’ll send you something whimsical…
it’s dark out there this summer fall/winter [since the election of that motherfucker in the USA etc] ; i think we need an injection of whimsy / duende.
so fire away. svp. amanda at angelhousepress dot com
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