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  #1  
Unread 04-21-2021, 07:20 AM
Sarah-Jane Crowson's Avatar
Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Default Poems out in Petrichor, Feral & Random Sample

Hello,

I'm sorry I'm only half-here this April. I'm busy frantically making strange misshapen visual-poetry creatures. This is a shame because there are some beautiful/interesting/enigmatic things to read on the boards. I hope they are still here in May.

Anyway, I have some visual poems in the new editions of Petrichor & Random Sample.

Also a visual feature in Feral.

Although they're not formal by any stretch of the imagination, I have revised these since working with people on here. I think some of the patterns of formal poetry are creeping in to my found word choices, and it's helping them (I'm certainly getting more accepted), so thank-you.

also you have complete liberty to be silently or vocally critical of any/all of the context/publication space since I completely deserve that boomeranging right back at me

Sarah-Jane
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Unread 04-23-2021, 09:35 AM
Aaron Poochigian Aaron Poochigian is offline
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Thank you for sharing these, Sarah-Jane. They are stunning.

I am still learning how to talk and think about visual poems.
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Aaron Poochigian
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Unread 04-24-2021, 06:17 PM
Bill Carpenter Bill Carpenter is offline
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Congratulations, Sarah-Jane. These seem like classic, concentrated, elegant surrealism with more aesthetic flair than you see in the old timers. I don't know much about it, but my impression is that manifestoes and ideology were as important as the objects themselves. An anti-aesthetic movement, even. Iconoclasm vs. iconoduly. Do you have a relationship to surrealism you would like to comment on? Foregrounding the enigmas of representation seems to be a feature here, which the surrealists certainly did, but did not not necessarily talk about.

Last edited by Bill Carpenter; 04-25-2021 at 06:50 AM.
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Unread 04-25-2021, 03:43 PM
Sarah-Jane Crowson's Avatar
Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Thank you Aaron and Bill,

I’m sorry it’s taken me a bit of time to get here to reply.

Aaron, I’m a huge admirer of your poetry, so it is really exiting for me that you think these work. Visual poetry is interesting, I think - particularly now - with the explosion of digital media. I’m pushing into exploring animation, too, although I haven’t made anything that works very well yet - it’s another form to learn, another dimension to bring into the mix.

Bill, thank-you - and that’s a brilliant question.

I think about making visual poetry as a tiny act of resistance. I’m heavily influenced by the surrealists and dadaists, and Hannah Hoch/Max Ernst in particular. I directly reference Ernst quite a bit. And yes, this is also a reference to surrealist ideologies - of change, of subversion, of play. Your question makes me think that I’m probably also using them (paradoxically) as icons, which I need to give proper time to consider (thank-you).

But, beyond that, I’m interested in ideas of space - space as something socially constructed -as a potential change agent. Some writers/theorists on space (Henri Lefebvre in particular) think that the arts have a particular role to play in being able to represent our worlds differently - and in representing things differently open up the possibility for social change.

So, in many of the collages, I’m trying to re-imagine existing narratives/ make a different type of space and/or create new ideas by using existing representations and transforming them into something different. I cut up quite a few colonial narratives to try to re-purpose them into different, imagined, worlds.

I try to gently subvert powerful structures. In more recent things I’m using out-of-copyright images of (19 formal spaces such as the courtroom, and layering them, changing them into labyrinths, playing with ideas of tourism, of place, of scale, so the viewer becomes a tiny tourist in a space that hopes to be read as a re-imagined myth bricolaged from re-purposed representations of formal structures of power. Which also (hopefully) places such things against a backdrop of history/time - and lets us see them as transient.

Thank-you again for asking such an insightful question. I don’t often get the chance to talk about my work, and I hope my answer is clear and reasonably coherent. I really, really hope it doesn’t sound ‘artspeak’ too.


Sarah-Jane
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Unread 04-25-2021, 04:43 PM
mignon ledgard mignon ledgard is offline
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Default Sarah Jane - Petrichor and Feral

Sara-Jane,

I'm intrigued by your art and like the 'fish-headed' one at Petrichor, a lot.

I keep going back to look at the first one from Feral, the one with the flowers. I zoom to look at details, but it loses clarity; I wonder if you could post that one here, at Eratosphere. I am only able to see the embroidery on one of the flowers, which looks like an appliqué, with a small bead in the center.

I paint and enjoy crafts. Your art is new to me. This is a peculiar thing to say, but, since I've been looking, specifically, at the flowers, my mind is going places it's never been before. Suddenly, I have a dress in my hands, a white, gauzy dress, turned inside out, and I'm 'embroidering' the seams. Then, I'm embroidering the designs that can be seen through to the back of the material, no longer gauzy, but more like a cotton percale.

I find the imagery very relaxing and I'm very intrigued about this. Is this odd? Now I'm, just a little, laughing nervously, under my breath. I don't know if I will ever 'do' this, but I think it may influence my painting, in ways I cannot foresee.

Candidly sharing and thankful for the newness,
~mignon
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Unread 04-26-2021, 05:31 AM
Bill Carpenter Bill Carpenter is offline
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Thanks, Sarah-Jane! Very helpful and interesting. I will have to dwell on this a bit and look at the works again.
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Unread 04-26-2021, 02:17 PM
Sarah-Jane Crowson's Avatar
Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Hi mignon - and thank-you for looking at these - and to a fellow artist/poet, greetings!

Feral uploaded the low-res images I'd sent as previews (I have no idea why) but I'll try to upload one to my website and DM you a link tomorrow or the day after. The image is wholly photoshop, though. In an ideal world, it would make a lovely embroidered textile! I hope you post some of your paintings here at some point. I'm going to try, after my poem-a-day marathon, to revise one of my labyrinth images for the 'art' forum to see what people make of it.

Bill - thank-you - just to add that I don't think you'll see the concept so much in the Feral pieces, which (I am a publication tart) I made specifically for the call/theme as I wanted to get some work out there. I'm going to try to post/workshop one of the more recent collages in the artists' forum here on Eratosphere after April.

Sarah-Jane
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Unread 04-30-2021, 02:13 PM
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Rick Mullin Rick Mullin is offline
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Wow! I really like these Sarah Jane. I especially like "The Constellation of Small Uncertainties." And the poems in Feral are like alchemist diagrams, all spherical.

I have a friend who is doing something essentially different but collage-related that you might like. He has made a collage from images in the New York Times daily for years and years. Peter Jacobs.

I like what you're doing--it combines interesting traditions and comes off sharp and fresh with the right element of surprise.
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Unread 04-30-2021, 03:28 PM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Rick - Thank-you so much.

I've had two 'blown away' moments in the past two days, and this is one of them (your book, Huncke, is amazing - I think I've managed to find various pathways through it - and one of the things about it I love is that it invites journeying from different perspectives, so it changes on each read).

Peter Jacob's work reads for me as beautiful, lyrical - in my reading, it creates textures of space. Subtle, too - although there's a central aesthetic, it references the visual narratives of what I imagine might be central pillars of content of NYT and re-imagines them. But the time, the time - f*** @ the absolute resistance in the slo-mo process of these. For me, this reads as the alt-narrative of capitalism which isn't all about the dissipating moment. This is the long resistance. It leaves me without easy words, too.

Again, thank-you,

Sarah-Jane
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  #10  
Unread 04-30-2021, 07:08 PM
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Had a bad day. Thoughtless post removed.

Be well.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 05-01-2021 at 07:44 AM.
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