Artist Statement
This broadside series invites the type of curious interaction that I want for my poems; rather than presenting a legible text alongside a complementary image, they present a poem that is also itself a visual experience. The words of my poem aren’t completely clear because of the weave; some language is obscured by the warp, which means readers may skip over words or try to fill in the blanks, or just decide to engage with the words visually instead of logically. The handwritten text adds another level of visual interest and potential illegibility.
Materials & Technique
“a symmetry” is a limited-edition series of 7 original poetry broadsides. This is # 2/ 7. The poem “a symmetry” is handwritten on strips of acid-free paper and woven into strips of printed paper, then pasted onto metallic cardstock. The poem is partially legible. Each broadside is slightly different. The poem responds to my neighbor’s tree, which grows over our shared fence, drops leaves and twigs, and always needs trimming. I glued only at the weave’s junctures, and the warp—the vertical lines, the trunk of the tree—to the paper, giving the lines of the poem an unkept reach, like the tree.