Celebrating Artists – Beyond Book Covers
So today, I wanted to talk a little bit about some artists I love – and why I think as important as it is for writers to be plugged into a writer’s community, they should also strive to connect to the visual art community. And it’s not just so they have slamming art to use the next time they have a book cover coming up! (Although that is a positive side-effect…)
Tonight, I’m going to the reception for artist Yumiko Kayukawa, whose new show is opening at terrific Seattle gallery Roq La Rue. (She also graciously allowed me to use her piece, “Zen Cracker,” for this web site.) You can see some preview art for the show here. So many people talk about the SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, or maybe they mention the Henry Art Gallery at UW, which hosts some kickin’ literary events as well. Both deserve a visit, but this quirky downtown gallery always has something up on its walls that makes me wish I could afford to buy more art.
And soon, I’ll be reading October 21 at a reception for local painter Deborah Scott, whose fairy tale series “Waiting for Prince Charming” is a combination of subversive pop culture wit and traditional stunning painting techniques. Check out this review of her show here. It starts today as well – click here for more information about viewing her work! You can see why I’d like her work.
I’m hoping to meet up with the cover artist of my first book (Becoming the Villainess) Michaela Eaves, at the opening tonight, and I just wish I could follow Rene Lynch (the cover artist of She Returns to the Floating World) around because her exhibitions are always in fancy places like Germany and NYC.
I think poets have a lot in common with visual artists, whose work necessarily taps into the subconscious, whose images are often drawn from the same sources (history, mythology, pop culture) as ours. Yumiko’s work draws on old eighties record covers, Japanese anime, and ecological concerns; Rene Lynch clearly focuses a lens on fairy tale tropes, as does Deborah. Michaela’s pop-goth-with-a-twist sensibilities might suit, say, a speculative writer. I think we can benefit from hanging out with each other; poets can be inspired to write based on the striking visual input, and artists (maybe, hopefully) can be inspired by our writing. (Well, like I said, we can hope!) I think about Frank O’Hara, who used to write for fancy art magazines as well as book reviews and poetry, who wrote the poem “Why I Am Not a Painter.” I’ve loved this poem since I was a kid, and I swear I’ve actually had the conversation in the poem. “It needed something there.” “There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet.” So today I encourage you poets to go out this weekend and find some local art and try to talk to a real live artist!
Radio Interviews, Covers, and other poetry news
Yesterday I got to talk with host Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo and fellow female comic book superhero enthusiast Ramona Pilar Gonzalez about Wonder Woman, Joss Whedon as high priest of the religion of television, feminism and comic books, the need for goddesses in pop culture, the VIDA count, the Geek Girl Con, and a lot more. You can listen to it here.
I promised you could see the cover of my upcoming book She Returns to the Floating World soon, and here you go. It’s only the front cover so far, but the front’s the exciting part, right? Let me know what you think. The art work is Rene Lynch, a piece called “The Secret Life of the Forest (A Different Sleep)” which works really well with the themes of the book, I think, all about dream worlds and transformations.
I got to see Martha Silano read from her new book, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception. The last time I saw her read at Open Books, we were reading for our books Blue Positive and Becoming the Villainess, partners in crime with Steel Toe Books. Her children were babies then – now they’re darling children, complete with giant stuffed ponies and mops of hair, nearly teenagers! Ah, nostalgia. We had a lot of fun and got to hang out with a lot of poets I love that I don’t get to see very often. (Update: for a better recap – with pictures! – check out Kelli’s blog, )Of course, we were nearly done in by a surprise blizzard that shut down the road in and out of our apartment complex, but we managed to get in and out okay (when I got home and saw the news and all the wrecks on the road near our house, I felt like a big risk taker. Then I dreamed about being Buffy and getting electrocuted. So, all in all, a normal day.) This morning the world is frosted in snow, though this being late February, it’s sort of odd for Seattle to be quite this snowy. I am very ready for spring.
Cover Art – Rene Lynch’s Secret Life of the Forest "A Different Sleep"
Notes from California:
A sunny 80 degrees in San Francisco, got to visit the friendly swans at the Palace of Fine Arts, and walk around the Presidio and the Golden Gate Park’s Fort Point. Calla lilies and pink ice plants in bloom, and not a single cloud in the sky! Also, delicious kinds of food of all sorts. But who can eat when it’s so nice outside?
Friday night we went to visit City Lights bookstore, sandwiched between multiple neon strip clubs, and the fabled upstairs poetry room. Glenn was fascinated with a book on Sylvia Plath’s art work, and I finally got to see some of Ron Silliman’s books. His work (at least the books that were there – “N/O” and “Age of Huts”) read a lot more like someone’s journal notes than I expected from all his talk about the avant-garde and Language poetry. Hm! Beautiful cover of “Age of Huts.” I also found some books I hadn’t seen before, books by Amy Gerstler and Julianna Baggott, both of whom wrote collections with a lot of persona poems. Overall, I’m still an Open Books girl, I think.
The art galleries in San Francisco were fabulous. I discovered a new favorite artist – kind of in the same surreal mood as Yumiko Kayukawa, but without the manga/80’s-ad flavor. More in the eerily beautiful vein of a fairy tale illustration gone slightly awry. Here’s a link to Rene Lynch’s amazing Secret Life of the Forest…girls with swallows in their hair, a girl looking at the observer with an owl hanging overhead, girls running from wolves in the woods. Would someone like to buy me one of these? Swoon!
Off to Monterey tomorrow…spending the night in sunny suburbia, maybe checking out some neighborhoods in the Silicon Valley outskirts on the way. Passed enough company headquarters to make my former-techie heart pound. Yoohoo, Yahoo! How much is the median rent in Los Gatos? Watsonville? Pacific Grove?
