Visual Poetry … Words Conjure More than Meaning

Maureen Shaughnessy 1987 Artist
That moment when you are trying to explain all the swimming thoughts and notions that go into a piece or series and you realize that you can’t get it all out and you crack up at yourself.

My post for today is about two things I think are related. Poetry — visual poetry. And how I feel about aging. I originally published this post on April 12, 2007 and the photos are from an exhibit in 1987 in Helena, Montana at the Third Eye Gallery.

 

Trying to look like one of the calligraphic stick-sculptures in this installation"Fragments of An Ancient Poetry"
Trying to look like one of the calligraphic stick-sculptures in this installation”Fragments of An Ancient Poetry”

 

I used to be part of a weekly online poetry group and originally wrote this post for the writing prompt, The Body Knows.

Fragments of an Ancient Poetry

Imagine a word such as moon. When you say moon, your lips curve. The word itself has curves. It conjures: round and old, and traveling on a long, slow-sounding journey. It’s interesting to me, that along with the sound of a word, the visual aspect of the word affects its meaning.

As a sculptor, I’m fascinated by the shapes of language and as a writer I’m drawn to the meaning of shapes. This is a natural merging of two of my primary interests.

Fragments of an Ancient Poetry is a three-dimensional page of my sketchbook-journal, revealing the increasingly refined and complex strokes of a thought process, or poetic idea.  ~ excerpted from my Artist’s Statement for Fragments of an Ancient Poetry.

 

art installation by Maureen Shaughnessy
Installation piece by Maureen Shaughnessy titled “Sometimes Breathing Feels Like Dancing.” Handmade paper cast on willow branches.

I completed the majority of the pieces in this exhibit (along with some working studies, sketches and paintings also exhibited) while attending a paper-making intensive at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.

The other major piece in the exhibit is titled Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing. There were 10 large figures comprising a series of yoga/dance poses. I made the figures with handmade paper and willow branches, and had access to a live model (a dancer) at the Banff Center while I was doing my studies for the sculpture.

 

Installation art by Maureen Shaughnessy, 1987
Looking at the photos of this exhibit almost 30 years later, I realize I have always been so supported by my friends in Helena.

Now for some thoughts on aging and how that is related to these sculptures …

 

"Day Dream Night Being" Maureen in 2006/2007
“Day Dream Night Being” Maureen in 2006/2007

2007 (when this post was first published):  

  • I’m 20 years older now. Maybe 20 years wiser, though that’s arguable. As I revisit my artist’s statements and photographs of my work from that period of my life, I realize I have a different perspective now. I hope it’s a broader perspective. I still love these pieces and wish we lived in a house with walls large enough to display them. I definitely feel differently about my body these days. And I know my heart and head are different.
  • I look at the figures in Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing. I see my youthful body bent gracefully, supplely, just like the willow branches I used to form the dance. My life has taken some twists and turns … in many ways I am still dancing with life. And death. With joy. And sorrow. And grief. Feeling the grace along with twinges of pain, love, longing … feeling bent, slightly dried out, though still beautiful.
  • Will I ever truly know the steps of this dance? Enough to look ahead, to feel confident that I will not trip over my own feet? That I will be able to glide over the dance floor without regret, with my heart open to the music, to the senses, to the love of the one whose body sways in rhythm with mine?
  • Looking back on the experiences that have brought me to this threshold, I would also say, that “Sometimes Dancing Feels like Breathing.” ~Maureen Shaughnessy, April 2007
My mom and me in 2014
My mom and me in 2014

My thoughts in 2015, 8 more years later:  

  • I’m 60 now. I am happy to be this age. My body, my face, my hair all look very different. I have gained weight, have wrinkles (duhhhh) and my hair is really short, silvery (and cute.)  My body is shorter too — almost 2 inches shorter. Geez!
  • And… I am still beautiful. Sometimes I hate looking in the mirror. Sometimes I love the way I look. Sometimes I feel bent and do not feel the grace. Other times I just do a happy dance. I revel in stretching my muscles on a walk or hike. I have less sorrow. Less heart-pain. More joy. Lots more joy.
  • I think I am wiser. World-smart. More engaged with others, though content to spend long hours alone.
  • My heart is full with the love of my partner, Tim, our 5 children and 5 grandchildren and all of my siblings and mom.
  • I have lost some people who are important to me. I have gained new friends. Really good friends.
  • When I had that solo exhibit at the age of 33, I did not know I would become a full time artist. Or that I would own a gallery with my husband whom I had not yet met… I had no idea of the trajectory my life would take. The ups and downs.
  • I am grateful for every single moment I have had and every feeling, joy and loss, every person whose path I have crossed.

Sometimes Breathing Feels Like Dancing. Sometimes Dancing Feels Like Breathing. These days, in gratitude, I Feel Like Dancing and Breathing. Namaste´

SoloExhibit1987IRArticle
1987 Independent Record Article about the mixed media sculptures exhibited in 1987 at the Third Eye Gallery in Helena, Montana

All of the black and white photos were taken by my dear friend, Robin Leenhouts. She is a wonderful artist and art teacher, now living in Milwaukee.

Luke’s Dream

Luke's Dream

Luke sleeps and leaps
in his sleep. In his dreams he
can fly, spinning feathers through the air
legs out front the way a hero flies.

Luke sleeps and chases
in his sleep. In his dreams he
snaps at fish that tease and leap and
fly in moonlight, and arc over our bow.

Luke sleeps and watches
in his sleep, in his dreams he
sees a spirit ship floating the crest of a wave
it has come to take him home

Detail of the Flying Fish in Luke's Dream Detail of the Moon and Night Sky in "Luke's Dream" Detail of Luke's Dream

I recently finished “Luke’s Dream.” My sister, Kat and her husband, Jerry, commissioned me to make a mixed media painting to remind them of their sweet rottweiler, Luke,  and their sailing life. It was lovely to deliver it to my sister in person and to see her reaction to it.

The 48 inch by 30 inch piece is in a mahogany box (made by Tim) and covered with glass (thus the weird horizontal lines reflection of the siding on my mom’s house in the top photo.) I included an old barometer, compass, cleats, and bits of sailboats, maps, cables, sails, a sacrificial-zinc disc. Scribbles and smudges of charcoal, conte and pastel. Layered papers and drawings. Photos of peeling cracked wallpaper blended with an antique planosphere (map of the heavens) and of course, Luke himself sitting on the bow of the Splendid Mane.

Luke developed bone cancer in his leg, and died a few years ago. Fly free, Luke. Sweet dreams! Catch lots of rabbits and flying fish, won’t you?

thank you God for most this amazing day

blue sky, green leaping leaves

One of my all time favorite poems is by e.e.cummings, a poem I first read when I was 14 years old, living in Virginia. My dad introduced me to e.e.cummings. Throughout my spiritual journey, from Catholicism to Buddhism, to exploring other Christian faith communities and finally finding my spiritual home in Huichol Shamanism, e.e.cumming’s poet-mystic vision rings true to my heart.

We are all climbing to the top of the same mountain on different trails.

May all Beings be Blessed. May all Beings be Loved.

blue sky, green leaping leaves

Here is the poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

– e e cummings