The Roadstead Project

A few months ago, I joined a new collaborative group emanating from the fecund literary community in Port Townsend. We are The Roadstead Project. We are 20 poets and visual artists, coming together to see where our creative exchange and intermingling of pictures and words will go. 

 

So far I have worked with a small sub-group, most of the time with two women poets. I listen to their poetry and I sketch and paint quickly, embodying what resonates for me. No pressure, no “final” feeling, just flow. But out of this comes promise, a spark I follow further, aligning with other directions I have had percolating in the background. (They in turn respond to my work, but that is topic for another blog.)

 

Listening to writer Leticia Huber vividly read her Spanish language poem entitled “Mar” — I painted a small watercolor and ink sketch of various views of the sea. It was created with the notion of different windows into the moods of powerful ocean energy…which is what I sensed from the repetition and drama of the poem.

 

But I also realized the “many views” fostered a further direction that I have wanted to pursue. I am inspired by a favorite and familiar piece in the Portland Art Museum (James Lavadour, “Bodies of My Bodies”), and also by David Hockney’s Grand Canyon landscape (“A Bigger Grand Canyon”), where equal “tiles” make  up the whole of a painting, as well as the notion of repetition that I saw in a recent trip to a Provincetown, Massachusetts gallery. I also wanted to further pursue abstraction and surprise in working with the acrylic latex medium, which lends itself wonderfully to waves and sky and sunlight. 

 

 

The final piece from this particular exploration is 2 feet by 2 feet, each tile different and yet the whole expressing “Mar”. More to learn and create in this direction, but thanks to the serendipity and willingness of collaboration, I look forward to seeing where it goes next.

 

 

Here’s the poem:

 

Mar maravilla
Mar mar
Mar de luna
Entre sus aguas
Mar de luna
Entre su espuma
Mar maravilla
Mar mar
Mar del
OM
Y de suspiros
Mar sensual 
Sobre la arena
Mar principio de la vida
Mar de la vida y la sal
Mar de canciones secretas
Mar hermoso
Mar hermano
Mariposa 
De los cielos
Mar marinero
Y
Mar madre
Mar amor
Y mar mareo
Mar amoroso
Mar armonioso
Marinerito Celeste
Mar murmurando murmullos
Mar mar mar mar
De mi amor
Mar maravilla
Mar mar