All Things Fowl
Scratchboard, 10 x 8 inches, 2016 by Sarah Atlee. $330
For purchase inquiries, contact [Artspace] at Untitled at info@1ne3.org or by calling 405.815.9995
This post first appeared on my Patreon page.
A Hiding Place: Artists Respond to Poetry
"As children we all played hide and seek. We learned through that game: the stillness of hiding and the necessity of being found. Both are essential to living the communal life. this collaborative project expolores these themes through poetry and art. We have generated a creative conversation of the senses, of image and movement and language, so that what is hidden can be known."
- From the statement by curator and poet Jane Vincent Taylor
All Things Fowl is based on Jane Vincent Taylor's poem, "Being Little Catholic Girls." A snippet:
We lit candles. It was dangerous. Incense smoked out all things foul.
About the Imagery
The composition is based on traditional Byzantine icon paintings. Guillem Ramon-Poqui's book The Technique of Icon Painting (Amazon) is a great resource on this topic.
Who's that hen? The nun's habit and background images are inspired by the early Christian mystic and polymath, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). You can read about her remarkable life on Wikipedia.
Among her accomplishments, Hildegard invented an alphabet and language known as the Lingua Ignota. The little hula doll in the corner is using Hildegard's Litterae Ignotae to say "Aloha."
Scratchboard is a wonderful process of reductive drawing. It's all about what you take away. And the level of detail I can get with my x-acto knife is so pleasing.
A Hiding Place opens at [Artpsace] at Untitled on Thursday, July 28, and will be up through September 10. Visit the gallery website for more details.