Projects
Projects
Women Observing the Natural World
A college course in natural history taught by the late ecologist and entomologist Lincoln Brower—a world expert on the monarch butterfly—sparked my lifelong interest in natural history, including field research and environmental work as a young scientist. I have been working on a hybrid collection inspired by women naturalists born in the 19th century who lived and worked into the 20th century and after the 19th Amendment, securing a woman's right to vote was secured. The work includes both persona and epistolary poems written in the form of testaments in the voice of each naturalist (based on their work and life) and letters I back to each woman, reflecting on their personal stories and my own. My vision is to include a historical portrait photograph along with each imagined testament as well as one of my own photographs with each letter I write, a small token of gratitude for their life and work.
Women Making Art
In my second poetry collection, Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists , I built a gallery of ekphrastic poems inspired by the paintings of forty-seven women artists creating art over five centuries, and hailing from twenty-five different countries. As "curator," I organized the poems in four galleries, loosely organized in reverse chronological order so that the poems leads the reader and "viewer" back through time and history. The painting titles become the poem titles to "echo" the voice of each artist as I write in response to each work. The titles also reflect how subject matter deemed acceptable for women artists has changed over time. The project was sparked by my intense love of painting, and in particular, my interest in works created by women, along with the sentiment of the Greek poet Simondes of Ceos—"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks." Here is one poem from Chroma, along with the painting that provided the inspiration.
Self-Portrait Hesitating between Music and Painting
She is caught in the moment between two Muses—
Music, in her vermillion dress on the viewer’s left,
& Painting dressed in brilliant blue on her right.
She’s holding Music’s hand but has an open one
& she is leaning, the heroine in her own tug of war
that in between feeling—you know the one—pulling
both ends of a rope & afraid of being burned.
She knows the story of Hercules, the hero wrestling
virtue & pleasure before choosing his destiny, but wants
an answer of her own. Where would we be without
our myths & history? Music with her sheet of song
and scores, Painting with her palette & brushes—
Who will be the strongest, who will she love more?
For what they are but also for what else they are.
—Angelica Kauffman, 1794. Oil on canvas. Nostell Priory, UK