Pistols and Pollinators
Recently I have been involved in Pistols and Pollinators; a collaborative project between artists and poets over a period of several months which culminated in a show at Stoke Newington Library Gallery.
Different types of collaboration emerged amongst the artists and poets; one pair wrote to each other using the postal system and sent each other objects for investigation. Another pair played on the immediacy of first impressions by painting and writing back and forth in response to each others work in a painterly/poetic conversation. Another pair explored Diasporas and secret keeping in families. Another pair examined their experiences of different dwelling places through poetry and installation. One pair made poetic notes, doodles and drawings in the same sketch book, knitting streams of thought across the paper. Some pairs crossed into their partner’s territory; artists doing poetry and poets doing art. They said this approach opened up a whole new dimension to their practice.
I partnered with Sh’maya to produce a triptych in response to his Three Arias.
My collaboration with Sh’maya has been going on longer than this project itself. The Three Arias was an (as yet) unwritten concept he had in mind for a couple of years. It was after some time we spent together (see last post) that he began the writing process to birth the idea into written form and I subsequently responded to them visually.
My starting point was to take the idea of ‘Threeness’ expressed in the Arias by using three equilateral triangles for emphasis – three x three. At first I found it challenging to be moved by the poems. My first idea to overcome this block was to play the audio recordings and paint whilst I listened. That got me started, but I soon felt it was important to engage with them more rationally or consciously. After many readings I began to sense their rhythmical pace and the suggestiveness of the words offered visual ideas; I allowed the tempo and imagery of each poem to inform my handling of paint and bodily movement.
HEART
The time
I was drinking tea
In the garden
Watching the ivy bush
At the end of the lawn
It was there
Lay the final embers of the sun
Languished breath hovering
Lowing orange and echoless
Cross the flow of the ivy
The leaves hung swollen
Suffused in light
Fertile in foetal white
Igniting the chlorophyll phosphorescent
Incandesced
Through slats of the garden lattice
Their shapes were smattered and splashed
By shadows of bush twigs
Slashed swooning over lunar chimeras
Fingers of cirrus reaching silhouettes
Past breadths of shimmering moons
The wind brushed through them in such a way
As to tremble their frames
In the radiance thus contained
Sonar flames
Straining through depths
Of waning coronas
Shuddered hushed and reverent
As emerald flares luminescent
In the roaring blush of a dying day
Between the ivy bush and I
Writhed a swarm of horseflies
Spinning frenetic ecstatic
In the pool-parched air
Each one drenched full in sunset
Starched wet in naked rays
Of aching dusk strayed across
Their flailing movements
A chaos of sun drops and TV static
Feral seething manic
Sporadic flight paths
Weaving poly rhythms
Twining patterns
Wings chiming over through and round
Globes of schismed sound
Splashing mirage shimmers and breezes
As raindrops sneezing on djembe-skins
The dance of the swarm
Poured wistful warm
Adorned the awning of the ivy
In crystalline storms
Fistfuls of lightshaft
Clasped enblissed
‘pon carnivals of fire
Marvels of flight-shine
Enlivened in light
That parts the edge of day
And the timeless charting
Of fledgling stars
GOHST
The time I was praying cross-legged
In my room
An incense stick burning
On the wicker stool
By the mattress
As I was praying
I opened my eyes
To a single wisp of smoke
Floating fathomless before me
Its slender figure sliding and writhing tender
‘neath the butter flesh breaths
Of my lips
I realised my prayers
Were flickering
Through the incense
Dappling its timbre
Sloping its stems
Curves fleshed from my essence
As petals unfurling through
Camomile limbs
It struck me
The groans of my spirit
Taking physical states
As the smoulder billowed
On the moans of its marrow
Barren blushes
Furrowing the rush
Bones drawn in hush
Gowned warm in the taste
Swathed in sounds of my want
Wrapped round as swaddling cloth
Lacing nascent clouds
I became aware of every movement
Every patter of desire
Pleating the syllables of smoke
Floating as scrawled notes
Wrapped indelible
Through the rote of my spirit
Pirouetting flight
Of wisps light-borne
Reached willow and saffron
Past the sills of my eyes
Tides torn through winds
The metre of wings
Beating drafts through the ether
Drapes of the dawn
Bursting gasps
On the shores of my skin
The room doused heavy with fragrance
Flora auras sating the chorus
The need the heart-cry
Mire of earth soil of my womb
Crooning for seeds of Heaven’s fire
Where toil bleeds bloom of myrrh
Purrs the anguish to pearls
Felled fertile ‘pon fallow worlds
Depths hallowed through shallows bereft
Kisses left nesting in clefts of shadows
I sat draped in the grain
A motionless rain shower
Strained through the shape
Of source and matter
So my entire room was scattered
In patterns enticed
When light smatters passage
Between earth and paradise
S(WET)
The time I was walking
Through the forest
Surrounding the monastery
I was staying in
I came to a fork in my path
One way bringing stillness
The other a boundless roar
Pounding the very hush of my heart
I followed the sound to a wooden bridge
That overlooked a stretching lake
Between them
Poured a waterfall
Panting breathless
I stood there stalled
Pulled by the water
Enthralling my senses
To rest mesmerised
In its screaming gait
Watching
I made my eyes drop
At the same rate of the fall
Drinking for split seconds
The forms beckoned out from the foam
Mystical bodies
Inexpressible things
As though water
Travelling such speed
Ceases to reflect that of earth
But sculpts the faces and moulds
Of transcendental realms
Thus it swelled
Cascading and crashing
White clashing foam crushing close
Gushing cool-cold kisses
Kissed capricious crisp
Encroached through bliss and glint and gold
Crests of feathers
Cloud-clasped delicious
The rush of crowds
Clustered in hisses
Chrysanthemum petals
Creased in flusters
Where platinum wrestles
Fleeces of milk
Wings of snow angels coalesced
Flesh collapsed in glacial jewels
Crashed colossal
Chrome caressed
Splashed palatial
Constella wombs
Wombing stems of
Breath and essence
Increasing Elysium
In effervescence
Coliseum blending to spires capsized
As stalactites chimed
Through glockenspiel sighs
Swan flocks scything
Kaleidoscop-crops
Diving kamikaze
As spinning-tops
Skimming skin of
dropletrainbotic
Pocketing spray
The rain rejoices
Plunged and risen as glistened noises
Voices christened
In stories hoisted from hosts most moistened
By wet most whet
Set in chorus of castanets
Clapped cataclysmic
Splash-swept dash of cosmic districts
Flashed and flecked ecstatic fresh
Blessed and blithe
In high choir cries
Caressing trestles of classical heights
Brushing scalps of decibel mountains
Mounting fount crescendos flushed
Cumuli rush and crystal-cleansed
Creatia gasps caress the gusts
Blush the glass of Heaven’s lens
Mending the crevice
tween hearth and soul
Wetting the coals
Shoaling the lonely
Sweating the path
Clothing the lowly
Holy upon holy upon holy upon holy
As I looked up from the waterfall
A single white gull
Circled skywards
Climbing silent
The pining void
Of the lake
Copyright @ 2010 Sh’maya
In the final brush marks I surprised myself to find that the image of the white gull flying away at the end of the Third Aria, S(WET) had emerged accidentally in my painting at the top of the waterfall. Since the pieces were all about the thin line between the spiritual and natural dimensions, this seemed a fitting end to the painting process.
I was looking at Renaissance paintings for inspiration in this triptych and the kinds of colours used in religious painting informed my palette.
The preview combined an art exhibition with poetry performances.
http://www.accidentandemergence.phanfare.com/
