Ekphrastic Folk Art 1

 What Happens When Folk Art Meets Ekphrastic?

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

But, before I show you the results, here are brief explanations of what ekphrastic and folk art 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, Dutch hexagons, autumn scarecrows, quilts, and hand painted plates. 

What is Ekphrastic?

Ekphrastic is a term that describes the practice of using words to comment on a piece of visual art (i.e, painting, photograph, sculpture) and has been around since ancient times. For example, in The Iliad, Homer provides a lengthy, discursive account of the elaborate scenes embossed on the shield of Achilles. The word ekphrasis is a combination of two Greek words: ex (out) and phrazein (to point out, explain).

 Now, onto the excellent and innovative poem, letter, fiction and prose-poem: 

WHEN BLUE

transforms naked wood to sky.
With brushstrokes. Cyan. Magenta.
When yellow sun throws light. Day bright.
And dusk, red gusting, promiscuous.
Stirs a commotion of waves.
Dissolves in water blue as wind.
To sit on a chair possessed by sky.
Straight-backed. Rooted. Leaning
against a wall. While all around.
A restless tableau. Light or saturated.
Bends and bonds and burdens. A loop of days
transcendent. Telling the story of weather.

Jody Baltessen is an award-winning Canadian poet, writer, and archivist. Her poetry appears in Hamilton Arts & Letters (HA&L), Grain, Pangyrus, Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets), Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly (TNQ). 

Ig: jb.presentperfect/

 
  

Dear beautiful chair,
 
I’m sorry. In a jitterbug loop, I can not settle into you. I’m trying to complete a book review I should have done ages ago.
 
I am grateful for your invitation, and if I could, I’d sit on you and dream my life away. I truly hope that time will come.
 
Until then, I send you love from a rainy Irish Sunday morning,
Rhona
 

Rhona Greene, a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer from Dublin is published in several Black Bough Poetry editions and The Storms Journal and she was shortlisted for the Dai Fry Award. Her work is also featured in Sarah Connor’s ‘Advent Poems’. Tw: @Rhona_Greene

 Acrylic

It was during the endless dry heat that I found myself following the smell of coconut to the outside of her studio. Sitting in a blue chair, her method of mixing Moroccan Oil into the brush strokes of acrylic would leave the scent of a distant summer on all her self portraits.
“Come in if you’re going to stare.” Perhaps, because I had none and could grow none, my obsession with hers took hold. I mastered intricate braids and would gather fistfuls of jasmine from her garden to stick within the folds. For a time, this is how it was: a dance between my fingers placing the flowers and hers plucking them out to bury within a world of color on the canvas.  “Someday it will all be gone and with it your love.” 

Meeting her eyes in the mirror, I brushed the nest of almond tresses down her spine. “Never,” I whispered. It started with an eyelash, and then with a clump. I would shuffle behind her with a dustpan, hoping to catch and savor each coffee-stained curl. When the rains returned, I entered the studio to find everything gone, save for one composition propped up on her prized cerulean stool. Collapsing on the weathered wood, I hold the painting up to the light, and pull a single strand of hair from the thick black letters of my name– still wet. Still warm.
 
Rebecca Rae Pechbrenner's work has appeared in several publications, including The Sitting Room: Home. She  can be seen wandering the shores of Dillon Beach with her husband, daughter and two German Shepherds. She resides in Sonoma County, California. Ig: heyrebeccarae/ 

 
  

Homage
 
I painted you when promises were spring, when stars swirled in the moonless summer sky and sunlight was just over the autumnal horizon of my shoulders. My bit of heaven in winter on the dry shores of this cobbled sidewalk, you hold me up when the toils of trying so hard to balance on the endless waves of this world, I almost topple.   
I rest easy in your embrace; my two legs upon your four. You are a comfort long craved – a singular refuge of wood.  

 

Karen Pierce Gonzalez’s work include True North (Origami Poems Project 2022),  Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books 2023), and Down River with Li Po  (Black Cat Poetry Press 2024). Her writing and assemblage art have appeared in numerous publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  

Fb: karen.p.gonzalez.14

 

Image: Pixabay