One of the projects I’ve been working on during my residency at the Prairie Center of the Arts is a new series of broadsides that combine poetry and photographs by Adam Wagler, digital artist extraordinaire. When I arrived mid-May, the first thing I did was begin writing and revising poetry that might work together to form a shorter series. One thing that fascinates me about Adam’s work is his focus on perspective and disappearing points.
Many of his photographs offered unique vantages on stairwells, architecture, and the natural landscape from around the world.
Particularly, I loved his focus on stairs. As I began going through my own poetry, I noticed I too had many, many poems where stairways were an element of the poem.
Something about the in between space of stairs, of a path that leads up and down, a crossroads within the space of buildings interests me. There were ghosts on the stairs, elves in the stairwells, murders happening only floors apart, and children climbing up and down, playing, unable to dismiss a set of risers as a functional passage, but saw them rather as a place to climb, imagine, and explore. So from about fifty poems, I culled five: “The Library Elf,” “Village Murder House,” “The Kindergarten Elf,” “Night Watch,” and “Stair Elves.”
The artist and I went back and forth over the next three weeks selecting photos, discarding photos, discussing layout and design, adding brushes, taking away or softening brushes, sending the proofs to colleagues and friends to check on typos and design, and finally, Thursday we printed a test print.
Once we had a scaled down version of all five images, we made further final touches and revisions and finalized the digital version of the art.
Friday, we printed the limited edition press run. Yay!
Once we were finished printing, we signed and dated them -The Disappearing. I’ve set up a page with more details on the project, but wanted to offer a little description of the cool things that can be done at a residency and that can happen between artists and poets. Collaborated projects are so fun.
