The Peace Liard Regional Council is sponsoring a festival showcasing diverse forms of writing comprised of discussions, presentations, workshops, readings and performances.
Accompanying this festival will be an exhibition of art works inspired by the writings of three poets: Kym Gouchie, Billy-Ray Belcourt and Erin Mouré.
I am often inspired by literature and as I have recently been working with letters and words in an abstract way, I was happy to take up the challenge of this exhibition. I found all the poems inspiring but chose Erin Moure’s words because her work is familiar to me as she is my sister-in-law.
Purpose
(from The Elements, House of Anansi, 2019)
To draw text as one draws water from the zone
beneath the house.
To articulate all the texts of a life, as they arise.
Not separating them into poems or essays.
Creating spaces for words on pages as if they were
walks or
benches.
Drinking Coffee.
Drinking another coffee.
Sun on the wall. Just
sun.
-
- A Bench
-
- A filament of sun
-
- A Walk
-
- Water Beneath
These mounted linocuts (12 x 12 inches) are printed on Japanese paper. The three plates used spell “life,” “text,” and “write” but the letters are arranged abstractly: out of order, cut up and cut off, overlapped etc. Each print is made from two plates, one in yellow and the second in red. You could say I have dismembered the words to make room for unexpected visual compositions, using the letter forms as content rather than to convey meaning. I think this is what Erin is trying to say in her poem. Sometimes, the sun is just the sun. Red is just red and yellow is just yellow. Of course, it was irresistible to title them after words in her poem: A Bench, A Walk, A Filament of Sun, Water Beneath
