Time and Place

Art, Poetry, and Titles

Welcome back to “An Artist’s Notes” - where I write meandering thoughts about my experiences as an artist.

Today’s particular meanderings took me to many places. But, for now, since I just experienced my first in-person Oregon Poetry Association conference last weekend (after attending for two years virtually), where the phenomenal keynote speaker, Marcus Lattimore, reflected on his unusual path to becoming a poet, I think I’ll start here—with this short poem inspired by and then inscribed in pencil on a recently finished art piece of the same name.

Universe Expanding

Love is
chaos and order
a template for creation
temple of creation
loosely stitched
and wrapped around
all the celestial wonders.

Love is
irreverent and boundless
and will not
submit
to 
only one notion
instead
it dictates
the
universe

must


e x  p   a    n     d.

This piece became a bridge between two ongoing series, “Origin of Species” and “Time and Place,” recently hung for a temporary solo exhibition in Austin Hall at Oregon State University. It also harkens to an earlier, more experimental time in my art-making practice—before anyone knew what kind of artist I was or what I would make. I had no expectations to meet.

With “Time and Place,” I was explicitly drawn to exploring quilt traditions and forgotten stories. Each piece alludes to a particular fabric piecing design used in traditional folk quilt construction. It includes elements found or unearthed that form new stories and experiences within their new context. Sometimes, these stories appear as phrases I quickly write as I work. Other times they form more like prose, as in “I Did Not Expect to Find You…”

I wrote this story directly on the art, with its structure loosely based on a log cabin quilt design.

In part:

“…Haphazardly stuffed in an antique postal cabinet deep within the store of curiosities, two people who could easily pass as my long-lost Croatian grandparents sitting on the couch in a perfectly staged Holiday photo. And the quick snapshot of a pass-ing marker divulging the significance of an unusual monument to Will Rogers who famously noted when asked if he is an “American Citizen” that “… I’m not these Americans whose ancestors come over on the Mayflower but we met them at the boat when they landed.” Found deep within the Pikes Peak Region so named after the quoted adventurer (spy?), “Yonder peak will never be scaled by mortal man.” I have many questions after parsing the story of this forgotten black-and-white. I had only known the aforementioned Cherokee man as a cowboy actor of some long ago generation, but as I dig deeper, I find an author, a humorist, a friend, a complex man who departed this life too early along the icy terrain of the Inuit, yet not without leaving a deep impression found even now in the once lost memento of an “Aug 1949” cross-country vacation, which found this “Shrine of the Sun” a remarkable site to climb and capture for the stories surely told in a neatly kept little living room filled with close friends passing precious memories on glossy Kodak paper with its nostalgic trademark white borders, from hand to fingertips while coffee and tea and homemade pecan pie grace a shared end table.”

I like to think about what the materials and art tell me as I work. What draws me to the forgotten memorabilia? What mysteries do they hold? How do they fit together amidst the loosely bound threads?

I love the relationship between words and art. Even though I trained as a visual artist, I envision no walls between different art forms - creativity meanders in and out of every medium’s perception-imposed room, regardless of skill, training, or experience. I enjoy just letting myself follow inspiration.

Yet, I was unprepared for the question that came my way as I wandered through the halls of poets - “Are you a poet?”

This simple question left me tongue-tied as I flashed back to that moment when I finally felt like I could call myself an “Artist with a capital A.” Making that leap of self-acknowledgment was not easy. Titles such as “artist,” “poet,” “musician,” and “writer” can seem arbitrary and yet hold so much meaning. Are they a profession? A hobby? A state of being? Does someone need to lean over and tap your shoulder with a sparkly gold wand to make it so?

Here, I would remark on the beauty of getting older—the cares and worries that once enveloped me and held me back, slowly giving way to a freedom of creativity I hadn’t felt in a long time.

If it wasn’t for that seemingly simple question.

To exploring your creativity regardless of title,

Jennifer

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What are your thoughts about creative titles? I’d love to hear them as I prepare to write a longer essay on this topic in the future. You can share in the comments or add your vote here.