From the Page's Edge: Water in Literature and Art

Press Release

Loving both literature and art, I decided to combine the two disciplines in a traveling art exhibit. I

gathered artists and told them the theme: water. Given that vehicle, they were to find a segment of

literature that mentioned it and would inspire an artwork.

Months passed, and I welcomed images of basking seals, ponds by night and day, streams where salmon

could swim. A building appeared on a river, a yard was flooded with rainwater, the earth was born.

How, you ask, do these views relate to literature? The artists were told that the chosen segments of

literature would be printed on panels and hang next to their paintings. Without knowing in advance what

the responses would be, I saw the artists were not illustrating so much as painting how something felt to

them in their hearts. The paintings’ relation to the literature was intuitive, and the intersection was

powerful. Personal statements connecting art with literature are found in the exhibition binder.

Diana Kurz’s seals were not “ordinary” seals but mythological ones waving their heads while seduced by

Sirens’ songs. Susan Pyzow’s pond may have been visited by the type of “antedeluvian wading bird“

Thoreau saw. Robert Berlind’s pond probably felt the laps of larger waters and knew it would hear larksong

in the morning.

Patterns appeared with strong emotions. Joe Overstreet’s water offered the gift of safety and Daniel

Anthonisen’s that of solace. Eloise Beil’s underwater experience matched the poet Daniel Lusks’s poetic

statement of dislocation and Heidi Glu¨ck’s abstract work provided response to the dislocated sailor in

Charles Olsen‘s poem. Howardena Pindell turned her horror of high waves into a sculptural painting,

crediting the author of ‘The Perfect Storm.’

A change of seasons with mixed elements of excitement and nostalgia are seen in the paintings of Richard

Haas and Tom Nelson. Mystery involves the workings of the moon (Greg Kwiatek), the dispersal of a dead

person’s clothes in water (Peter McCaffrey), and the staunch triangular forms struck by the tide in the

Herman Maril’s work.

In Dona Nelson’s painting, an outsized splash hitting the Upper Bay recalls for me both 9/11 and the

March 11 tsunami in Japan. Memories add an odd perspective to the busy tautness of Leaves of Grass.

The sacrificial ritual of salmon (Bill Hochhausen/ Stanley Kunitz) may have been performed by humans on

the same dates.

A single building on a river (Peter Malone/ William Wordsworth) and “Kids’ House” by Virginia Creighton

(E.E. Cummings) both express childhood joys. The waves in Sidney Tillim’s poem go back in time through

“earth’s dentistry of mountains” – perhaps tracing the route in “A Gully Somewhere.” Andrea Halbfinger

cites Genesis when the first day begins in the evening.

We hope the exhibit entertains and prompts an interest in looking at literature in visual terms.

Virginia Creighton, Curator