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This week’s piece is an experiment in acrylics employing a novel technique of painting in quadrants, organized into quadrants themselves, working from an image turned upside down. The technique was taught by Georgeanne Gaffney and is designed to help the artist work with shapes and colors, liberated from trying to depict a “scene”. In my painting, the upper right quadrant was the first painted. The lower left was the next quadrant; the upper left, the third; and the bottom right, the fourth. It might be visible that in my first quadrant, I was “mistakenly” painting with acryl gouache rather than acrylic, which created a dreamy, otherworldly quality. It is this quadrant that actually made me want to walk into the world of this scene as a viewer – another happy “mistake”. We can call this piece “Ode to Error #2”.
I’ve been writing more about our current covid-paused world than I ever would have expected to, and like I suspect many others might be feeling, I’ve been in need of a little respite, so here’s a poem about the spectacularly stunning El Cajas National Park in the remote reaches of Ecuador at over 14,000-foot elevation that not many people have experienced. Here’s a site with some wonderful images of the park – http://www.vivecajas.com/.
Click here to read Cajas by JC Wayne
Click here to read “K-9 Billy Grief”
I wrote the following poem on Friday in response to an article in Shelburne News titled, “Split-Second Decision Saves Life”. This is a follow-on for “When Life Is Stranger Than Science Fiction”, which you can read below.
Click here to read “When Life is Stranger than Science Fiction“
Here’s a poem I created for Rattle’s “Poets Respond” feature in which poets respond to an article in the news. This poem was written in response to Doreen St. Felix’s article in the March 30 The New Yorker, “What We’re Watching Under Quarantine”. I am a poet, artist and Founder of The Poartry Project (poartry.org) here in Vermont, which is dedicated to “building loving worlds through loving words” and hosts many events and projects in the community and internationally via virtual livestreaming to make the world of poetry accessible and of Golden Threads of Good Books for Children (and the young at heart).
Comments
I just love the line “of misplaced Eiffel Towers,” it evokes so vividly the absurdity of the Vegas stripe.
Love that, Keisha! Thanks. Cheers, JC (the poet)
I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I found this very thought provoking, thanks for sharing.
I’m so glad to hear that, Jaben. It’s one of my particular missions to share poetry with lives who don’t usually engage with it much, if at all! Cheers, JC
K-9 Billy really hit home to me with these lines:
But you know when you lose someone you love?
Those unexpected moments
that catch you
unawares
creep up behind you
and hitch the grief up out of your bruised
heart
and into your mouth?
And then the grief is loosed
Thanks for sharing what was meaningful for you, Trina. It was that kind of stealthy experience of grief that took me by surprise and sparked the poem. Cheers, JC
Born of these times, yes, but perfect of and for them. As it will also be in the aftermath, when and if life gets back to it’s previous crazy pace and some will have forgotten. Fabulous..
Thanks, Cynthia!