Bard College Presents an Exhibition of Photographic Collaborations Between Artists and Poets

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Bard College presents a special exhibition of photographs and poetry on display from December 8, 2014
through January 9, 2015, on view in the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library in the atrium and the Sussman Room, 2^nd floor. The exhibition features two works, “Winter Music” and “Madonna Comix,” and focuses on the punctuation of words by images/images by words -- and how the two processes inform one another without illustrating or defining one another. There will be an opening reception and poetry reading on Tuesday, December 9, from 5-7 p.m. in the Library atrium. For more information contact Betsy Cawley at [email protected].

Winter Music is a collaboration between artist/photographer Susan Quasha and renowned poet Robert Kelly published by ‘T’ Space Editions. In poems that powerfully embody the excitement of seeing a world for the first time, Kelly responds “to her body of luminous lyrical enactment, free of narrative, almost devoid of dependency on subject, let alone the human subject, and yet which well over with emotion, desire, joy in beholding. Using only the image full-formed in the camera, with no subsequent manipulation, she gives us a precious thing, a chance to see with her seeing, not just what she saw. We become the agent of her investigation into the colors of our attention.” 

In Madonna Comix (Media f8), a series of 26 prints based on 11 poems by Celia Bland, Dianne Kornberg transposes images of innocence, faith, motherhood and fire over lines from the poems and a pentimento of “Little Lulu” comics. Kornberg used Photoshop to manipulate photographs, re-assembling them to create a technique reminiscent of hand-washed etchings.  In his introduction to Madonna Comix, Luc Sante wrote: “Limbs, beaks, crotches, feathers all tumble over the page. With the backing scrim of comics the effect is bottomless. What runs through these pages—words and images, violence and humor, doubt and possession—the sum of them is love.”           

About the Artists/Authors:

Poet and fiction writer Robert Kelly was educated at CCNY and Columbia. Since 1961 he has published more than fifty poetry books. Kelly has also written collections of essays, manifestos, and volumes of short fiction. He has been especially interested in collaborations with artists and other poets. Kelly is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the Program in Written Arts at Bard College. Recent books include: The Logic of the World, The Book from the Sky, Uncertainties, A Voice Full of Cities: Collected Essays, Oedipus after Colonus, and The Color Mill. rk-ology.com

Artist Susan Quasha has worked in photography, assemblage, collage, ceramics, typography, and poetry. She has exhibited her art at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Blum Art Center and Kleinert James, among others. Quasha is the co-founder of Station Hill Press where she has been principal book designer for three decades. Quasha studied at The University of Connecticut with poet Charles Olson and did graduate work in English Literature.

Celia Bland teaches poetry and nonfiction at Bard where she is the International Coordinator at the Institute for Writing & Thinking. She is the author of Soft Box: Poems (CavanKerry) and Madonna Comix (Media f8). Her poetry, essays, and reviews have recently appeared in Drunken Boat, Rain Taxi, American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Narrative Review Witness, Green Mountains Review, and Lumina.

Dianne Kornberg’s photographs and photo-based prints have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are represented in numerous collections, including the American Embassy in Belize, the Henry Art Gallery, the Houston Museum of Art, the International Center for Photography, the Princeton Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Her work has been featured in several book publications including Contemporary Art in the Northwest, 100 Artists of the West Coast, and Selected Works of the Portland Art Museum. Her three monographs are: Field Notes, Photographs by Dianne Kornberg, 1992-2007; India Tigers in 2009; and Madonna Comix.

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December 5, 2014

This event was last updated on 12-05-2014

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