The Blackstone Valley Art Association Art & Poetry Pair-Up is a fascinating adventure in creativity. It merges the worlds of the written and the visual. Is a picture truly worth a thousand words? Or is it as Isaac D’Israeli said, that a poet is a painter of the soul? We’re about to find out!
Here’s how this works.
All of the participating artists at the BVAA put their names into a purple fedora. The participating poets of the Worcester Writing Collective and the Sutton Writing Group put their names into a cerulean bowler. We then randomly draw the name of one visual artist and one poet. These two now form a dyadic unit. A collaboration of audio and optical.
The visual artist creates a work of art in their chosen medium. It could be an oil painting, a watercolor, a sculpture, mixed media, photography, or whatever else they wish.
The poet writes a poem on any topic they wish. It can be a sonnet, a haiku, a limerick, a free-form verse, or any other form of poetry.
When each person is done, they present their result to their opposite half. The yin to their yang.
Now the poet has a piece of art to interpret. They create a fresh poem about this work of art. It can be a literal interpretation of what they see. It can be a pondering of the emotions they feel. The poet can interpret that work of art in any way they desire.
The visual artist has a poem to interpret. The artist creates a fresh work of art to explore this poem. Again, they can choose to literally portray what the poem describes. They can choose to focus on one aspect. They can create an abstract representation of the emotions. Anything at all.
We are looking to reserve gallery space at the Worcester Public Library for Spring 2017 for our show. So by the spring we will have a two pairs of creations from each pair of artist-poet. There will be the work of visual art with the poem written about it, and there will be the piece of poetry that had a visual art created to match. Each art-poem combination will be hung together.
Let us know if you are interested in participating! Our aim is to finalize the lists of names by August 31, 2016.
