Ekphrastic Folk Art Season 3, #1

                                                         What Happens 
                                        When Folk Art Gets Ekphrastic?

To find out, I invited several writers to mix it up; to play with this folkloric

image. Using their literary talents, they did just that. Jumping right into the challenge, they created inspiring storylines and conversations.

But before I show you the results for this issue, the first of two issues in Season 3, here are brief explanations of what folk art and ekphrastic are.

 
What is Folk Art? 

Folk art, in general - art made by folk - is 'decorative' art applied to functional (everyday) items. Popular examples include weather vanes, furniture, quilts,

and hand painted plates.

What is Ekphrastic?

Ekphrastic is a term that describes the practice of using words in poetry and 

prose to comment on or about a piece of visual art (i.e., painting, photograph, sculpture) and, for many, is often limited to what we call 'fine art' by trained 

artists. But, in fact, ekphrastic writing about art that embellishes common

items has been around since ancient times. For example, in The Iliad Homer provides lengthy discursive accounts of elaborate scenes on Achilles' shield 

(an every day, functional item).

The word ekphrasis is a combination of two Greek words: ex (out) and 

phrazein (to point out, explain). 

Be sure to check out Season 1 and Season 2 in our flipbook library. 

Now, onto the innovative works that open Season 3! 

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Charity Shop Doll

She still shouts out protecting 
the green, tells them to leave her
alone and not trample on her forest.
I hear the words: Seeds! Not bricks!
Seeds! Not bricks! that she cried
when she was torn from my arms,
tossed to lie in someone else’s upset.
For years, I had to live without our mascot,
march alone, whilst always searching.
Bricks rose turning green to a dirty brown.
Now on a tiny wooden chair, her eyes,
her arm reminds me how luck filled that
charity shop, but not the felled trees
over whose land she now sits, mourns for.
She can still hear them breathing.
 

Julie Stevens' poems cover many themes but often engage with the problems of disability. She is widely published in places such as Macmillan and OUP,  Broken Sleep Books, and Ink Sweat & Tears. She has five published pamphlets. http://www.jumpingjulespoetry.com

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What Oma Made for Me

Tired eyes, arthritic hands, (abundant heart) and endless love-- the artisan’s tools Oma used to make me a purple-ly whimsy doll. Where 

go I so goes she; we hand in hand (ma belle ami). Her button eyes 

fixed to the landscape of my dreams and Oma’s spirit stitched to 

every seam. The yarn is spun of marigolds and other hues of oranges fair such are the makings of her hair that Oma wove with pastel 

threads snatched from majestic dawns, and ribbons spooled from rainbows. Tenderly she packed the doll all cottony to soak up tears 

and soften sorrows then threaded in an amulet assuring safe tomorrows. Arthritic hands still clutch the doll she made for me 

and travel we (ma belle ami) and Oma too, though long ago of this 

world through. Yes, long ago of this world through.

 

Karen N. FitzGerald is a genre-fluid writer whose works are curated in several 

e-zines and print anthologies. Her debut chapbook is  ‘Language of Spring, published by Bottlecap Press https://bottlecap.press/products/_langknf

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She lives now

in shadows of once-upon-a-time where carefully pinned-together then sewn threads of orange, pink, and purple will never unravel. They carry memories of a tender life with a child who adored every inch of her.

A joy to behold, this open-eyed treasure cuddled in the arms of a dreamy girl whose life was drained of hope when disease struck her spine.

The doll stays out of the light so as not to fade her handwoven cloth. The textured fabric still holds the child’s forever-after kisses.  Their warmth keeps the night’s chill at bay.

Karen Pierce Gonzalez, an award winning writer and artist, has five chapbooks, five poetic librettos, and more to her credit. Linktr.ee/KPGFolkHeart

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Mami Wata

When I was young my mother sewed a doll

A mermaid made of purple corduroy

Hair of gold yarn around her face did fall

But this doll was not meant to be a toy

Placed on an altar hung from the ceiling

With other spirit dolls that she had made

Meant to provide protection and healing

Yet somehow this one made me feel afraid

Mother Water the meaning of her name

She makes her home in rivers, lakes and seas

In Africa she has a certain fame

Where locals offer gifts on bended knees

Representing both beauty and danger

Mami Wata preys upon the stranger

 

Mercedes Dugger is a native Californian currently residing in San Francisco with a talented poet and his beautiful cat. Co-authored Morning Tanka, a book of poetry, with Dane Ince.  https://www.facebook.com/mercedes.dugger

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Ekphrastic Folk Art Season 2, #4

        What Happens When Folk Art Gets Ekphrastic?

Wooden Box

To find out, I invited several writers to mix it up; to play with this folkloric image. Using their literary talents, they did just that. Jumping right into the challenge, they created inspiring storylines and conversations.

But before I show you the results for this issue, the final one of Season 2, here are brief explanations of what folk art and ekphrastic are. 

What is Folk Art? 

Folk art, in general - art made by folk - is 'decorative' art applied to functional (everyday) items. Popular examples include weather vanes, furniture, quilts, and hand painted plates.

What is Ekphrastic?

Ekphrastic is a term that describes the practice of using words in poetry and prose to comment on or about a piece of visual art (i.e., painting, photograph, sculpture) and, for many, is often limited to what we call 'fine art' by trained artists. But, in fact, ekphrastic writing about art that embellishes common items has been around since ancient times. For example, in The Iliad Homer provides lengthy discursive accounts of elaborate scenes on Achilles' shield (an every day, functional item).

The word ekphrasis is a combination of two Greek words: ex (out) and phrazein (to point out, explain). 

Be sure to check out Season 1 in our flipbook library. 

Now, onto the excellent and innovative writers who complete Season 2: Daniel Bueno, Basiliké Pappa, Merril D. Smith, Judith Vaughn!

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The Burial
 
There was a little couple, two spiders, who—somehow, some way—gained immortality.

 
They outlived their children. Another set. Then another.
Then they knew.
They embraced—each other, time.
They held change.
 
They saw differently after. Cold from their little mouths. Hidden breaths.
 
One day, visiting a new settlement of the other kind of immortals, they found a carved wooden box—open, colorful, strange. Symbols along its sides. Just the size of a nook beneath a root.
 
One spider crept inside.
The other paused. Waited. Tilted its body, listening.
 
Stillness.
 
Nearby, a young immortal couple—were they fighting? Mating?
A slap. A door. One gone forever.
 
An old immortal approached. Closed the box. Without a word, began to bury it.
 
The girl wept—for the love they might’ve been.
The spider watched, still again, as earth covered its beloved.
 
And for the first time in forever,
was alone.
 
Daniel Bueno, MFA (Creative Writing-Fiction, San Francisco State University),  is a writer from Northern California. Awarded the Joe Brainard Fellowship, he is currently teaching English at Solano Community College.
 
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Blooms Across Blue
 
The wooden chest was empty
when Mama placed it in my hands,
my name and the year in brilliant red,
the color of dawn, she said,
 
see how they’re set like an island surrounded
by a flower-sea of sighs and hope,
the crimson bloom of womanhood, the rising-green
a promise.
 
I’ve carefully tucked my dreams within,
wrapped in scraps of wool or linen, a bit
of taffeta, some silken threads enclosing each wish--
adventure, comfort, my first kiss—
 
rose-scented, sea-salted, thirty years of wave-tossed letters—
 
so many dreams I’ve laid in that chest--
so many she’s missed.
 
Merril D. Smith, an independent scholar and poet, writes from southern New Jersey. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies.www.merrildsmith.com, blog: www.merrildsmith.org

  
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Secure
 
For your treasures, Father said, smelling of wood, freshly stripped.
For your dreams, Mother said. Her fingers held the earthy smell of paint.
The daughter loved the cambered lid that said her name; the metal clasp, its solid
click.
 
Day by day, her riches swelled.
 
Lace bobbins, linen threads, glass-headed pins.
Smoke-tree leaves, November-kissed.
A morning flight; on the water’s edge, a swan stretched its wings, then took to the
sky. She picked the plume it left behind.
Silver spoons in damask cloth. A pair of silk dance shoes.
A summer afternoon, round and smooth; she kept it as a river stone.
A rose garden inside a cut-glass bottle.
If only, she thought, I had the long veils of night…
 
Bobbins, threads, treasures and dreams—she braided black lace so fine she sold for a hundred sovereigns.
To build a life, she said, securing the lid with a click.
 
Basiliké Pappa, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, lives in Greece. Her work appears in DarkWinter Literary Magazine, FemkuMag, Heron Tree (among others), and recently in Tranquility: An Anthology of Haiku (Literary Revelations). X: @PappaBasilike
 
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Laugh
 
I look in the trunk I’ve left in the back closet since I got here so many years ago.
A chest for love and possibilities lost. Nothing of interest resides here now.
 
I still adore the smell of the cedar wood, shellacked to preserve. I am grateful to the
female insect who left her secretions of life on that unsuspecting tree for harvest.
 
Though it is flowers painted on the outside that capture my heart. Red, yellow, green,
nature contained on a trunk for containment.
 
I laugh out loud, a laugh the flowers dance to when I turn away -  they have very
good hearing.

Judith Vaughn lives in Sonoma, CA. She is a member of Poetic License Sonoma
and the CA Writers Club, Redwood Writers Branch. Her poetry has been featured on KSVY radio and is published in several anthologies and in online literary reviews. PoeticLicenseSonoma.com

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