Reading Event: Ann Hamilton at the Spencer Museum of Art

Website Update: The Magill Review interviewed me this week, and now the interview is posted! Check it out here, and learn more information on the behind-the-scenes of Minutes Before Sunset. (There will also be the link on my next post.)

12 days until the Minutes Before Sunset release!

Last night, my Poetry Writng II class (instructed by professor and poet, Megan Kaminski) was invited to read poems.

We read as a response to Ann Hamilton’s exhibit “an errant line” at the Spencer Museum of Art. It was an enlightening experience that established artists and their responses to others’ art. The moments encased the ability to communicate through art, and I really enjoyed taking part in such a unique event. If you live in Kansas, I really encourage you to take an afternoon and visit the exhibit, along with such a beautifully broad collection held within the museum walls.

Below is an excerpt from the Spencer Museum of Art website:

” Using digital technologies to explore the fundamental nature of cloth and the ways museums organize and maintain material legacies, Hamilton and Schira will consider the role of the hand and human practices that reveal and conceal. Working with current KU visual art students and Spencer Museum staff, the artists are also investigating their former relationship as student and teacher (Hamilton came to KU in 1976 to study fiber arts with Schira). Transforming multiple galleries with their immersive installations, both artists will employ images of and actual objects from the SMA’s permanent collection to create a multisensory tapestry that will feature changing interactive elements.”

The exhibit featured percepio dolls from early Italy, used to teach children during church about Nativity. The dolls are very elaborate and quite magnificient to see. Hamilton used them, scanned them onto cheese cloth, and positioned them along the walls to signify the movement through time and history. But, what I found to be one of the loveliest aspects to Hamilton’s art was her ability to adjust to the museum and use artifacts unique to the location. Instead of moving the infamous Bechstein piano, she covered it with a pink fabric and allowed pianists to play as a part of her collection.

Below are the two poems I read: the dots are not a part of the poems. It was the only way I could get the spacing to hold.

    I hear the Bechstein

a blushed blur of universal vibrancy, constructed

……….of covered caution, a colored dream—a

……….dance.

a pressed curl of waxen connections, torn

……….over a rumbled boast, teetered to time—a

……….transition.

……….Folded space, a future chase.

……….The movers and risers pull the views out of

place before anyone can                          see.

………………………………momentarily

Precipio

Beneath the cherubs of Basilica di

Santa Maria Maggiore, St. Frances of

Assisi inculcates the embroidered

    Il tuo sorriso è l’alba che ho perso questa mattina

word of God, threaded into centuries

of artwork extinction, rehabilitated

into the minds of a museum, where

we cannot touch, only to distinguish,

what is ours, what is there’s, why

we must perderò  understand the

implications of sunrises bringing

another day of God to teach.

Our loss of Nativity is

freestanding figures

brought on by time.

…

The third poem, when printed with a different text, actually looks like a face. It’s supposed to represent the dolls, but I cannot seem to get the internet to work with me, so I apologize. But I hope you enjoyed them if you didn’t have the ability to come to the event and/or visit the museum in the future.

~SAT