Poetry

today I’m setting the table for
my friend’s indigo dyeing class
studio visit
 
walking around the table so many to thank,
including--
-india flint at haystack for her ecoprinting class 
-norte maar & Jason Andrew for showing ‘a year’s worth’
-and later bewilder work with catalog
-everyone that taught & talked to me about natural dyes
-working at Naumkeag with their amazing flower gardens
-being a TA for Kathy Hattori at Haystack and dyeing with
            so many talented dyers
-learning that Shakers wore ‘any color they could dye’ as 
            an artist in residence at Hancock with Smp
-showing not once but twice with like-minded artists
            interested in the Shakers, organized by Albany airport & Eric
-performing meetinghouse with miram at a moonbow event
and later eal publishing it and then adding a podcast
-working with curator Christie Jackson & all at Fruitlands on
‘anything but drab’
 
often one thing leads to another
oftentimes it's just someone’s faith in your work
or just willing to say yes to something never done
but always, I am filled with so much gratitude to all.
Thank you. 

what is poetry?
how does one revise?
how does one make a manuscript?

emily dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.  These are the only ways I know it.  Is there another way.”
[letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson]

i’m playing a poetry game
rearranging words
moving about sentences
reading chanting aloud
working with Heather McKay Young is serious &fun
color charts the way

roster of reds
recently read
ranges of russet
selections of scarlet
swatches of silk

books from Memorial Library, Historic Deerfield
Shaker objects & textiles, Shaker Museum
.


—Maerz Dictionary of Color
—cupboard over drawers
-Syme, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
—Shaker Sister Kneckerchief
—Jorgensen Mastery of color
—Shaker oval box
—Chevreul, Des Couleurs
—Shaker survey tool
—The Practical Decorator, George Audsley & Maurice Audsley
—Shaker Sister Neckerchief
—Munsel Book of Color
—Colors, what they are and what to expect of them

all in line
aligned

midnight blue
dove grey
forest green
petal pink
crimson coral
 
I’ve cited
I’ve cleaned
i’ve imagined
I’ve inventoried
 
colors in Dorothy cloaks
colors in poetry manuscripts
 
 
image  Dorothy cloaks Shaker Museum
       Prismatic Utopia, poetry manuscript

color collected:
Stephen L. Wolf Collection
Memorial Library, Historic Deerfield
 
……………………………………

color    as       pie charts
                  dots blots
 
color    as       time keepers
                  palette makers
 
color    as       gridded groups 
                  accented accidents
 
color    as       prism percussions
                  regulated registers
            
color    as       absolute attributes
		  sequenced saturations
                        
color    as       consumer consensus
                  compasses quandaries 
                                                            
color    as       faceted philosophies
		  fascinating phenomena
                        
color    as       tangents into treatises
		  notions into nomenclatures
 
		  color collected


……………………………………………………………


—Munsel, Munsel Book of Color
—Rimington, The Art of Mobile Colour
—Chevreul, Chevreul on Colors
—Chevreul, Des Couleurs
—Hay, Nomenclature of Colours
—Hitchcock, Religion of Geology
—Birren, Color for Interiors
—Field, Field’s Chromatography for Artists
—Gaspard, Theorie des couleurs
—Bustanoby, Principles of Color Mixing
—Walch, Color Source Book
—Jones, Grammar of Ornament
—The Painter’s Handbook
—Wolf Flow Colors, Wolf & Son’s Paints


………………………………………………………………

Thanks Memorial Library/Historic Deerfield for fruitful fabulous fellowship to examine the Stephen L Wolf color book collection. 

NOTE: Application deadline for the 2026/7 Memorial Library Fellowship due April 3, 2026

dive into each color

drop into rooms skyed
stand on floors ochred
wind swifts chromed
wheel barrows greened

impromptu

studio still lives
hilma postcards
pigment processes
morning quick collages
harris tweed color considerations

movement
 
 
rocking
             
rusty red cradles
painted the colors of fallen leaves
 
                                                                 
body
 
washed and enshrouded in
garment of celestial gold
 
                                                                                                
shimmers
 
shines, alights
 
 
hoist
 
onto chrome green bier
green symbolizes growth
 
 
movements            
not static
 
all is concert
 




last year after attending
Cradled at Shaker Museum,
I wrote the above poem, ‘movement’

Cradled is now on view at
Make Hauser & Wirth LA

image, The Shakers A World in the Making, Vitra Design Museum

decoding colors

how many colors in each poem?
where are the rainbows?

blues greens golds
yellows browns chartreuse
pink reds and maroons

color decoding

coerce color

coerce color from walls
onto stilled photographs

unexpected vibrancy
cool crisp containment

palest pink pegs
perfectly aligned

kerchief so finely woven
becomes a cloud

goldenrod echoed
chrome yellow

vibrant victorious
trip to the sun

ice blocks stacked high
palest blue indigo sky

geranium red dresses
azure blue aprons

slate drab bonnet ruffles
cobalt vests

golden butternut
great coats

buildings on a map

…………

Walking through Williamstown, MA, Look UP!! Banners by local artists grace the downtown streets! See all the banners, HERE.

Eyes on Art Town banner exhibition is a collaborative project of The Town of Williamstown, Williamstown Cultural District and Williamstown Chamber of Commerce. The banner exhibition is made possible with grant funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

madder cochineal annatto sappanwood, 2025, watercolor, ink, threads, photographs, arches paper

“We look closely at the magic mirror, stand back from it, try to empty our minds of all else, strive to grasp the meaning of every colour, each one of which brings to mind memories of past impressions, which arrange themselves in an architecture as immortal and varied as the colours on the canvas, and build up our imagination, a landscape.”


images for ‘prismatic utopia’ taken at New Lebanon, Fruitlands, Hancock, Canterbury, Winterthur & many studios in between
 
[quote | Marcel Proust on Art and Literature 1896-1919,’ translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner]

yellow yellow blue blue  shiny
 
 
what does blue sound like
and chrome egg yolk yellow
or a pink mourning cloud
 
dark indigo weft
maximized to shimmer
jars your eyes
 
an ethereal
euphoric
emphasis
 
embodied into 
extraordinary
reverie

images: goldenrod at dawn, Mary Gartside’s Yellow colour blot, Polly Jane Reed’s Spiritual Map, The Holy City and chrome yellow in situ at the brick dwelling