Against Forgetting // Inspired Art

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? I don't know about you, but I've always enjoyed poetry and have been lucky to take some really awesome classes here at CCAD. I'm in a poetry class right now called "Poetry of Witness & Survival" and we've been reading poems from the book, "Against Forgetting." All of the poets in this collection have experienced war in some way. Some have survived, and others were only survived by their poetry.

One of our assignments was to artistically respond to a poem that fit our curriculum. I really enjoyed a lot of the poems in the book but the ones that seemed to resonate me were ones of hope. Even though these people were living through such terrible things they still found a way to have hope that things would be better.

The particular poem I chose to respond to is called "Things I Didn't Know I Loved" by Nazim Hikmet. The poem is comprised of images that Hikmet didn't know he loved; simple things like, "night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain."

After reading the poem there was one image I couldn't get out of my head. 

I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty 
   to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
   watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

I wanted to find a  way to represent this image that would serve as a way to remind me that there is beauty all around. 
I chose to piece it together with scraps of fabric because the poem seemed to be many images stitched together.

I didn't have a bunch of fabric scraps laying around so I used acrylic paint on drop cloth scraps.

I wanted really bright colors to capture the intensity of sparks. Once I was happy with the colors I cut out these
amorphous, abstract, petal-like shapes.

Ok. I cheated. I hot glued them on first. It made it a lot easier to "sew" them on!

Here's the finished project. I like how it looks a little folk art ish.

Here's where it lives right now. In the future I'd like to frame it and include it in a gallery wall. But for now it sits above
my desk where I need it most. It will (hopefully) remind me at 3AM while doing homework and drinking my 6th cup of 
coffee, that there are beautiful things all around me. I don't want it to take me years to realize that.

I hope I've maybe inspired you to get out there are read some poetry!

Happy Poetry Month!

Sincerely,

Ashleigh 

PS linking up here: