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poetree2012-01-07 12:44 pm
vom_marlowe) wrote in poetree2012-01-07 12:44 pm
Poetry Complements: Wallace Stevens Roundtable Intro and Commentary
Hello, this is vom_marlowe and the kind jjhunter asked me to talk a bit about a poetry project that I was a part of this last year, called the Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable, hosted over at the Hooded Utilitarian blog.
I'd like to introduce you a bit to the project, mention a few of my favorite pieces, and then talk a bit about being a part of it as an illustrator. Back in March of '11, Noah made a post talking about Wallace Stevens' poetry, the nature of illustration, the power of words, and his own experiences illustrating a Wallace Stevens poem. It inspired a passionate discussion and out of that discussion, Noah had the idea to host a bunch of artists illustrating Stevens' poetry.
Introduction to the project: A gallery of artists
Noah invited a whole host of artists--comics artists, fine artists, amateurs, those who work in video, you name it. Each post celebrated a different poem. There ended up being twenty-one works produced for the roundtable, and several pieces were posted each day.
Now I want to briefly squee about some of the works. I think my favorite (which is not to say the best, per se, just my favorite) is Lilli Carre's video Disillusionment of Ten O'clock. (Warning for migraine sufferers: this video has painting animation (color changes)). I find it has the same kind of joy that I found as a child watching the magic of the world around me. That video just plain makes me happy.
Marguerite Van Cook's piece, A High Toned Old Christian Woman will appeal to those who enjoy masks, roses, and tricorn hats. I think it's difficult to capture both the seriousness and playfullness of Stevens' poem, but I thought this one was especially effective.
Edie Fake's piece Floral Decorations for Bananas is incredibly powerful, beautifully inked, and not worksafe if you look closely. It's like a darkly imagined children's piece turned adult. *flaps hands* It's good. Really good.
Anja Flower's Earthly Anecdote is amazing. I find hir inkwork just sublime, the dark and the light and the composition. Beautiful. I've stared at it several times, just marveling.
I quite enjoyed Mahendra Singh's piece, too. It's got a fanciful feeling but quite beautiful colorwork going on with the inks that I really think works well in this format. I want to see a whole book of this, to be honest, just to enjoy it and get lost.
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
Noah allowed each artist to choose their poem (so long as it wasn't already chosen) and this was my choice. There are so many lovely Stevens poems, but I wanted one that I could fall into and drown in.
You can see my work here.
I love poetry, so I was very excited to work on this project, but I'll admit that my main feeling in the beginning was fear. Or possibly sheer terror. Wallace Stevens is a master poet and I was going to screw up his poem. No way could I get the feeling of those lovely words into a drawing. So for a while, I paced around and thought, never committing to paper the ideas and imagery flowing in my head.
But then I decided that I was being too literal. Stevens' poems are strong things--much bigger, much sturdier, than I was giving them credit for. So what if I screwed it up? The real poem, the ur poem, would still be there. I couldn't wreck the words. Anyone who didn't like my piece could just close the browser and move on to read the original.
Once I'd got that little internal mind issue sorted out, doing the actual artwork became a delight.
I sketch and ink primarily to relax and the images I had from the poem (lazy afternoon, seashore, moth, breeze, flower) were gorgeous. There's nothing so lovely as the rush in and out of a sleepy tide. Stevens spent a lot of time in Florida and I knew those seashores from visiting them long ago.
I could picture the scene in my mind, smell the sweaty-salt breeze, feel the grit of sand in the elbows, know the stupid feeling of the late afternoon heat that makes thinking difficult.
So when I sat down on my bed with my big drawing board and my favorite pencil, I thought about how I wanted to go about it. My idea, which I admit was not as successful as I'd hoped, was to get down the feeling of the images that the poem created, so that by looking at the pictures, you might be transported in a similar way. I wanted to get a similar reaction from the viewer that the plain text of the poem created in me, the reader, if you see what I mean, rather than just depicting the actions or situations that the poem talked about.
I feel that Hibiscus is about the surprise of summer and seaside, the long dull afternoon but also the shock of beauty that sometimes happens during those dead-like days. So I worked backwards from the end of the poem to the front in my mind, trying to think of how I could create a surprising loveliness, like a quick punch, visually and how I could also create a sleepy lull.
I decided to use pen and ink, smooth long lines, and lots of white space and intricate detail, to bring the viewer into thinking about flowers and beauty, but in a slow, thoughtful way. And then, when they're leaning in close to the monitor, looking at the moth wings, considering the sleepy lines of seaside movement, wham, there'd be the splash of color of hibiscus, red as red can be, and delicious with it.
Not that I necessarily succeeded, but that's what I was trying for. I think Derik Badman's piece here might be more successful at getting that kind of emotional capture than mine did. I didn't think as much about the blog format as I should have, and if I had to do it again, I might have put my work into a video format, drawing the eye around the illustrations, focusing in on different details the way the moth itself roams.
This stanza here worked well, I thought:
The words are:
And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the seaweeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear
I tried to capture the way that the top of the waves move, then where they are moving the seaweed, and then the rocks and sand below, with a sleepy content line of motion (the fainter lines, some of them top to bottom) that is similar to but at harmony with, the other wave motion.
A way to look at and imagine the water moving the seaweed but not disturbing our ear--instead lulling us gently.
Again, I'm not sure I quite succeeded. A blog post is very different from having an illustration (8 x 14) on your desk, so it's a challenge. There's the border at the top of the blog, the words on the side, all of which made for competing images to the work I was presenting. One of the reasons I feel Badman's work was so successful was that he allowed for lots of white space and a coherent frame, so it's easy to focus on his work and ignore the stuff around it.
I tried to bring the viewer back into narrative by showing the moth,
Then I whisked the viewer back into traditional narrative illustration here
And then I just plain dumped them right into the flower
Or so I hoped.
I think if I did this again, I'd play more with how the images showed on various screen sizes (something I didn't even think about, darnit) and how I might tie the imagery together more (or pull it apart). It hadn't even occurred to me to put the words into the art--as many of my fellow artists did.
One of the great things about this kind of experience is that with so many other artists doing work, you get a chance to see and cross-pollinate wonderful ideas. Oooh, I kept saying to myself, maybe if I do this again, I'll have to try....
I hope everyone has a chance to check out the great artwork and the fascinating different takes on the poems. So many great pieces! I'm happy to answer any questions about my own work, should anyone have any.
The Index to the Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable
vom_marlowe and the kind jjhunter asked me to talk a bit about a poetry project that I was a part of this last year, called the Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable, hosted over at the Hooded Utilitarian blog. I'd like to introduce you a bit to the project, mention a few of my favorite pieces, and then talk a bit about being a part of it as an illustrator. Back in March of '11, Noah made a post talking about Wallace Stevens' poetry, the nature of illustration, the power of words, and his own experiences illustrating a Wallace Stevens poem. It inspired a passionate discussion and out of that discussion, Noah had the idea to host a bunch of artists illustrating Stevens' poetry.
Introduction to the project: A gallery of artists
Noah invited a whole host of artists--comics artists, fine artists, amateurs, those who work in video, you name it. Each post celebrated a different poem. There ended up being twenty-one works produced for the roundtable, and several pieces were posted each day.
Now I want to briefly squee about some of the works. I think my favorite (which is not to say the best, per se, just my favorite) is Lilli Carre's video Disillusionment of Ten O'clock. (Warning for migraine sufferers: this video has painting animation (color changes)). I find it has the same kind of joy that I found as a child watching the magic of the world around me. That video just plain makes me happy.
Marguerite Van Cook's piece, A High Toned Old Christian Woman will appeal to those who enjoy masks, roses, and tricorn hats. I think it's difficult to capture both the seriousness and playfullness of Stevens' poem, but I thought this one was especially effective.
Edie Fake's piece Floral Decorations for Bananas is incredibly powerful, beautifully inked, and not worksafe if you look closely. It's like a darkly imagined children's piece turned adult. *flaps hands* It's good. Really good.
Anja Flower's Earthly Anecdote is amazing. I find hir inkwork just sublime, the dark and the light and the composition. Beautiful. I've stared at it several times, just marveling.
I quite enjoyed Mahendra Singh's piece, too. It's got a fanciful feeling but quite beautiful colorwork going on with the inks that I really think works well in this format. I want to see a whole book of this, to be honest, just to enjoy it and get lost.
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
Noah allowed each artist to choose their poem (so long as it wasn't already chosen) and this was my choice. There are so many lovely Stevens poems, but I wanted one that I could fall into and drown in.
You can see my work here.
I love poetry, so I was very excited to work on this project, but I'll admit that my main feeling in the beginning was fear. Or possibly sheer terror. Wallace Stevens is a master poet and I was going to screw up his poem. No way could I get the feeling of those lovely words into a drawing. So for a while, I paced around and thought, never committing to paper the ideas and imagery flowing in my head.
But then I decided that I was being too literal. Stevens' poems are strong things--much bigger, much sturdier, than I was giving them credit for. So what if I screwed it up? The real poem, the ur poem, would still be there. I couldn't wreck the words. Anyone who didn't like my piece could just close the browser and move on to read the original.
Once I'd got that little internal mind issue sorted out, doing the actual artwork became a delight.
I sketch and ink primarily to relax and the images I had from the poem (lazy afternoon, seashore, moth, breeze, flower) were gorgeous. There's nothing so lovely as the rush in and out of a sleepy tide. Stevens spent a lot of time in Florida and I knew those seashores from visiting them long ago.
I could picture the scene in my mind, smell the sweaty-salt breeze, feel the grit of sand in the elbows, know the stupid feeling of the late afternoon heat that makes thinking difficult.
So when I sat down on my bed with my big drawing board and my favorite pencil, I thought about how I wanted to go about it. My idea, which I admit was not as successful as I'd hoped, was to get down the feeling of the images that the poem created, so that by looking at the pictures, you might be transported in a similar way. I wanted to get a similar reaction from the viewer that the plain text of the poem created in me, the reader, if you see what I mean, rather than just depicting the actions or situations that the poem talked about.
I feel that Hibiscus is about the surprise of summer and seaside, the long dull afternoon but also the shock of beauty that sometimes happens during those dead-like days. So I worked backwards from the end of the poem to the front in my mind, trying to think of how I could create a surprising loveliness, like a quick punch, visually and how I could also create a sleepy lull.
I decided to use pen and ink, smooth long lines, and lots of white space and intricate detail, to bring the viewer into thinking about flowers and beauty, but in a slow, thoughtful way. And then, when they're leaning in close to the monitor, looking at the moth wings, considering the sleepy lines of seaside movement, wham, there'd be the splash of color of hibiscus, red as red can be, and delicious with it.
Not that I necessarily succeeded, but that's what I was trying for. I think Derik Badman's piece here might be more successful at getting that kind of emotional capture than mine did. I didn't think as much about the blog format as I should have, and if I had to do it again, I might have put my work into a video format, drawing the eye around the illustrations, focusing in on different details the way the moth itself roams.
This stanza here worked well, I thought:
The words are:
And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the seaweeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear
I tried to capture the way that the top of the waves move, then where they are moving the seaweed, and then the rocks and sand below, with a sleepy content line of motion (the fainter lines, some of them top to bottom) that is similar to but at harmony with, the other wave motion.
A way to look at and imagine the water moving the seaweed but not disturbing our ear--instead lulling us gently.
Again, I'm not sure I quite succeeded. A blog post is very different from having an illustration (8 x 14) on your desk, so it's a challenge. There's the border at the top of the blog, the words on the side, all of which made for competing images to the work I was presenting. One of the reasons I feel Badman's work was so successful was that he allowed for lots of white space and a coherent frame, so it's easy to focus on his work and ignore the stuff around it.
I tried to bring the viewer back into narrative by showing the moth,
Then I whisked the viewer back into traditional narrative illustration here
And then I just plain dumped them right into the flower
Or so I hoped.
I think if I did this again, I'd play more with how the images showed on various screen sizes (something I didn't even think about, darnit) and how I might tie the imagery together more (or pull it apart). It hadn't even occurred to me to put the words into the art--as many of my fellow artists did.
One of the great things about this kind of experience is that with so many other artists doing work, you get a chance to see and cross-pollinate wonderful ideas. Oooh, I kept saying to myself, maybe if I do this again, I'll have to try....
I hope everyone has a chance to check out the great artwork and the fascinating different takes on the poems. So many great pieces! I'm happy to answer any questions about my own work, should anyone have any.
The Index to the Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable
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