Ekfrasis

January 30th, 2010 - Ekfrasis:
An exchange between artists and writers.

Click on the image below to view the opening night video. Produced by Earthflight Productions.

“Do something,” Jasper Johns admonished artists. Take a dream or a flag or a color and “do something to that,” Johns said, again and again. So artists get ideas from the world around them, from experience and memory. And even from other artists. A visual work of art can inspire a writer, for instance. Using visual works of art as springboards for writing is the focus of this exciting exhibition.

“This exchange between artists and writers is ancient,” said curator Pamela Hart. “The Greeks started it all and named it ‘ekphrasis’ or a verbal representation of a visual work of art.”

What started out as a wild group exhibition including Big Daddy Roth, Christo, Saul Steinberg, Sailor Jerry, and A.R. Penck has evolved into an event that encompasses writers who will use art by these and others as a starting point for works of creative writing.

‘ekphrasis’ will feature both text and art. Novelists, non-fiction writers and poets will be responding to the eclectic collection of art in this exhibition. In addition there will be a reading. The text will be displayed in silk-screened broadsides created by master printer Gary Lichtenstein on the walls of the exhibition space alongside the art.

Curator Pamela Hart is writer in residence at the Katonah Museum of Art. She also teaches writing in Long Island University’s graduate School of Education. Her poetry has been published widely and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, The End of the Body, was published by Toadlily Press in 2006. She has an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.

Click on the image below to advance the slideshow.