Join Leesa Haapapuro in a workshop at the DSA gallery focused on illuminated alphabet woodblock prints and non-press chine collè techniques. The Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District awarded Leesa an Artist Opportunity Grant to research illuminated manuscripts and share that knowledge while creating a community art installation at the Rosewood Art Center in Kettering to celebrate the new printmaking studio. Leesa will be sharing that knowledge with 10 DSA members:
When: Thursday, October 5th - 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: The Dayton Society of Artist
48 High Street, Dayton OH 45403
Cost: FREE, limited to 10 DSA members
Parking: Free street parking available and parking lot across the street.
It is Leesa's hope that members will be interested in participating in the Passages project going up at the Rosewood. Participation in this workshop is not required in order to contribute to the community project at Rosewood. More information about this project below:
Thank you to the MCACD & Culture Works for supporting this workshop.
Leesa's project:
I will print William Carlos William’s epic poem “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower” onto large sheets of printmaking paper and invite the community to embellish the pages, demonstrating techniques for painting and gilding. Inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts and early printed books, the project will create a sort of modern scriptorium: where artists gather, working together to contemplate the words they embellish and illuminate for others.
The passages of poetry will be exhibited throughout the newly renovated space, a work in progress.
William's poem is a meditation on love, loss, and societal upheaval. Participants will choose which passages of the poem resonate with them and could spend time reflecting on the words as they illuminate the page, paving the way for substantive conversations.
"It is difficult, as William Carlos Williams famously put it, to get the news from poems, but poems can help bring us to terms with the news, and give us a place to put the sorrow while we consider what other action may be called for.” says Marilyn McEntyre quoting Asphodel, That Greeny Flower. Written in triadic lines, it is well suited to be printed onto individual pages and hung banner-style throughout the art center, quoting J. Hillis Miller from Modern Poetry once again:
“Asphodel gathers the world together and the lines rise continuously from a center which is everywhere. Since the lines ascend one by one from the same unfathomable ground, each is the equivalent of the others, the same and yet different. Flowers are facts, poems flowers, And all works of the imagination/interchangeable."
William Carlos Williams’ poem speaks to my interest in the symbolism of flowers, continuing the investigation into coded language that I began in my Garden of Hope project: “As Asphodel is the flower of hell but still triumphs over the darkness, so the space of the poem is not hell but is the flower which rises above death, for "love and the imagination/are of a piece,/swift as the light/to avoid destruction." J. Hillis Miller from Modern Poetry. And while printmaking, is not my usual methodology, it is a natural progression of my interest in making art accessible. With this project I hope to play a more active part in the community of artists, sharing my research and inviting collaboration.
I will use Georg Bocksay’s Guide for Constructing Letters as my primary source to create the text and initials used in the project, and the illustrations added by Joris Hoefnagel’s will provide inspiration.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RWD
Poetry and the practice of art making can help to contextualize our experiences. Illuminated manuscripts were visual tools, designed to focus the reader’s attention. The use of gilding and bright colors catch the light, and the detailed- often incongruous- illustrations insure that the reader spends time not just delighting in the text, but contemplating it’s meaning. Illuminated manuscript makers labored to create magnificent visual effects that would capture the reader’s imagination, and open their minds; Poetry is not didactic, it is open to interpretation the ambiguity and mystery could be an antidote to divisive/uncompromising news soundbites that inundate our lives.
I want to encourage contemplation of a poem that Robert Lowell praised for delivering “to us what was impossible, something that was poetry and beyond poetry. “I hope that participants will share their insights with others, and that we will all delight in the subtlety- and strength- of poetry and art.
Pictures of workshops from Art in the City:
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