Hello dear Toads and pond followers. Fireblossom here with a very special (to me) Fireblossom Friday, which requires just a smidgen of backstory. Not too awfully long ago, I had my DNA tested by one of those popular sites. My results weren't very surprising but one unexpected and pleasant result is that I made a connection with a cousin I hadn't known before. We dove into researching the family tree a little bit, and so I pulled out some materials I had. Way back in 1990, I thought I ought to ask my dad if he would tell me some stuff about the family history, because I knew he had researched it, and because he was already 78 at the time (I was a late-life baby) and I thought it's now or never, maybe.
"The Lightbearer" design by Edward Emerson Simmons, executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany
In January of 1991, I received 15 typewritten pages--not surprising at all from my newspaperman father. He loved a research project. Naturally, I read it several times upon receiving it. I found out all kinds of things, from my philandering great-grandfather who made three fortunes and blew them all on fast women (except the third--he died aboard ship while in the process of blowing that!), to his wife the long-suffering schoolteacher who died at age 89 when she caught herself on fire from the stove, ran out into the street and died, to my step-grandfather, a card-carrying socialist who lost his job at Ford Motor Company during the depths of the Depression for standing up to Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's henchman and right hand man.
"Gathering Wood" by Edward Emerson Simmons
My father also mentioned a painter on his side of the family, but I had never heard of the man, and this was more than a decade before I would be connected to the internet, so researching him was something I never pursued--until, spurred by my cousin, I researched him quite recently. Lo and behold, he was a painter of some note! His work graces the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, the Library of Congress, and several state capitols. His name is Edward Emerson Simmons. My father says he had a copy of Simmons's autobiography "From Seven To Seventy: Memoirs Of A Painter And A Yankee" but goodness knows where it is by now. Not in my hands, anyway.
"Melpomene" by Edward Emerson Simmons, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
My father was 19 when the painter died, but before that happened, Edward Simmons gave my father this bit of family wisdom: "We Simmonses are peculiar galoots but each one can usually do one thing good enough to get by." ("well" enough, Edward!) For Edward, it was obviously painting. For my father it was newspaper work. For me, hosting Fireblossom Friday perhaps? In any case, I probably have the "peculiar galoot" part down. ;-)
"High Sea" by Edward Emerson Simmons
To goose you to greater poetic heights, I offer the work of my relative, Edward Emerson Simmons, for inspiration. You may use any of these provided (public domain) or any you can find HERE. Then just link up and go visiting. Do please be sure to credit Edward for his work. :-)
Greetings to all toads, poets and wayfarers! Welcome to the Open Link event - The Tuesday Platform. It comes with a twist in April, with the offer of a wee prompt for those whose muses are almost faint with the effort of writing a poem a day!
The OPTIONAL extra today is the work of 20th Century artist, Wassily Kandinsky. Visit his page at WikiArt, select the image that speaks to you and WRITE! The artwork is in the public domain, so Fair Use principles apply to its use.
Side note: I am away from home, attending my daughter's graduation ceremony so my apologies in advance if I take a few days to visit all the links.
Tree Girl with Woodpeckers (1960)
Kaoro Kawano
Fair Use
With the medium of wood block, Kawano produced images quite startling in their simplicity. I invite you to visit the WikiArt page which features his work, and select an image which appeals to you.
In keeping with the Japanese theme, you may like to consider the form of Tanka. Back in 2013, we were very fortunate to have the expertise of Dr Hisashi Nakamura to guide us through several steps of tanka writing, which may be found HERE.
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Alternatively, you may find inspiration in the work of Henri Rousseau (1875 - 1910).
As a self-taught painter, Henri Rousseau was completely untrained in any established art techniques. He is best known for his naïve, or primitive jungle scenes. He also developed the painting style of portrait landscape, in which he would place a person or a couple in the foreground of a landscape painting. He may have been ridiculed during his lifetime, but he is now considered a self-trained genius, who created works of high artistic quality.
Visit the WikiArt page which has a selection of his paintings and choose one that speaks to you. No form or style is suggested here, simply the technique of Ekphrasis.
When uploading an image to your blogsite, remember that we apply the Fair Use Principles:
It is a historically significant artwork
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
The image is readily available on the internet
The image is a low resolution copy of the original artwork and is unsuitable for commercial use
Hi toads, tadpoles and other amphibians, today I thought I would bring you something truly challenging, a form or some technical detail of creating poetry. Maybe some aspects in the vast area of sonnets or haiku.
But...
Still there is some summer in the air, Sometimes when I lack inspiration I go to the wonderful site wikiart.org and try to find a picture or painting that inspires me. But alas, one thing that I have found is that this is often less successful than if I try to illustrate a poem already written. Often I get more comments when the poem reflects more indirectly the content in the picture.
So today want to do ekphrastic poetry. Ekphrasis comes from Greek and means to use a description of art (your poem) as a rhetorical or imaginative description.
Many might be familiar with haiga, and you all know that in a good haiga, the poem and the picture complement each other and create a wider wisdom than could be gained from the haiku and picture separately.
So today I will challenge you with just a single piece of art, and this time I would like you to find a poem that does not just describe the painting, but how it speaks to you, what stories do you find in it?. You might find a detail in the painting, or it might bring back some stories from your past, it might bring back dreams or hopes. But make sure you do not merely describe the picture, you have to find your story in it.
There are no requirement on form, you can write a poem, a vignette a news-article, an essay or maybe a novel (though that might be tough for me to read).
"My drawings inspire, and are not to be
defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the
undetermined."
~Odilon Redon
Greetings, pond-dwellers. This is hedgewitch. We toads
are all pitching in to support National Poetry Month, and the efforts so many of us are making to write a poem a day in
April. Today it's my turn to offer some
inspiration. I have decided on a simple ekphrasis challenge (scroll to bottom for detailed explanation) based on the work of French
symbolist painter and illustrator, Odilon Redon.
The Flight Into Egypt, by Odilon Redon
"Odilon Redon (born Bertrand-Jean Redon; French: ( April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916)
was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist... [He] acquired
the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as
a child... His failure to pass the entrance exams at
Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended..plans for a career as an architect,
although he briefly studied painting there.[Later,]..back in his
native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture..etching and lithography.
At the end
of [his service in the Franco-Prussian War], he moved to Paris, and resumed working
almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. He called his visionary works,
conceived in shades of black, his noirs. It was not until 1878 that his
work gained any recognition [and].. he
published his first album of lithographs...in 1879....In
the 1890s pastel and oils became his favored media... " You can read the rest of his full biography here on wikipedia
Caliban On A Branch, a 'noir' by Odilon Redon
I have often chosen works by Redon to illustrate my own
poems as there is an affinity I feel for
his art which I don't find in many artists. Perhaps that's because Redon was a Symbolist, (though his later paintings also show a strong Post-Impressionist quality) and we all know by now how I am all about the symbols.
Head On A Stem, 'noir' by Odilon Redon
Symbolism was a European movement around the turn of the Twentieth Century in painting
and poetry, which embodied many aspects of the Romantic school, but with a more
fantastic and often a more morbid and inward turning eye, or as wikipedia puts it:
"Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism,
anti-idealistic styles which were attempts to represent reality in its gritty
particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal.
Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and
dreams."
Ophelia, by Odilon Redon
The movement was heavily influenced
by such poets as Poe and Baudelaire, and its traits appeared in the work of a
wide variety of painters, including Gustav Klimt, Edward Munch, and Frida Kahlo
among many others.
Leda And The Swan, by Odilon Redon
"..The
symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by
symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely
personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references...more a philosophy than
an actual style of art.."~Ibid
Mystery, by Odilon Redon
Redon painted a wide variety of subjects and used a
varying approach, so I hope you will find in the pictures I've selected or at the link provided below, one that will bring a thought or a dream to
your pen. All his works shown here are in the public domain, but if you use one on your
blog, please give the title and artist's name so others can come to know him, too.
Here are a few final examples, and you can find many more at wikipaintings.org
"I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted.. an
object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the
day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the
other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the
forms and I was then reassured and appeased."
~Odilon Redon
Cup of Cognition(The Children's Cup) by Odilon Redon
Boat In The Moonlight, by Odilon Redon
Flowers, by Odilon Redon
Mask of The Red Death, another 'noir' by Odilon Redon
Ekphrasis Challenge
Ekphrasis:: a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art (Merriam Webster)
So, toads, toadettes and friends of the site, let us jump directly into 'the mysterious world of the undetermined,' select a drawing or painting by Odilon Redon and write to the subject, mood, or theme which it suggests. You can write in any form, long or short, in free verse or prose poetry. You can write whether you are participating in the poem a day process, or just because one of the pictures speaks to you.
As usual, your response for this challenge should be new writing, or an older piece so extensively reworked and rewritten as to be new, which clearly conforms to the challenge subject matter. Please link below, and I will be around to see where the works of this favorite of mine take everyone.
Enjoy!
All artwork by Odilon Redon, Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org. Quotes via wikipedia.
Greetings, toads, toadettes and fellow pond travelers, Hedgewitch coming at you with our weekend challenge. By now we're all well into our second week of April poetry
madness here at the Garden, so I'm not going to tie anyone's brain in knots
trying to learn a new poetic form. Instead, I'm choosing a simple ekphrasis challenge
today, to write to one of the paintings of Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla.
If you don't have time to read all my blithering, you can get to the lowdown on the challenge by scrolling down to the end of the post.
The First Child
As a child
growing up in the slums of Chicago, eldest of three daughters of a single
mother on welfare, Art was not somethingto which I had much exposure. A Superman comic bought with pop bottles I
patiently collected and returned for a two penny deposit, or the cheap print of
Jesuscut from a magazine above my
grandmother's bed were about it for me back then. I am nowhere near an expert or even truly knowledgeable about Art, but I do know that when I met it for the first time, it changed my life.
Another Margarita
This change happened in junior
high (middle school to you sprouts) when we took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw sculpture, I saw art ancient and modern, from medieval religious paintings that seemed
like a child's drawings, primitively sketched and colored by a species beginning
to feel its way from survival into something larger, to the bewildering abstracts of Picasso. I saw my first Van Gogh,
my first Seurat, my first Monet. It was like a door opening into a fantastic
palace of unbelievable treasures to me, and I spent many, many days walking its
halls when I became old enough to get there on my own. It
was there that Impressionism became the first Art love of my life, and where I stared for hours at Renoir's softly blurred, bright women and the ballerinas of Degas.
It's only recently, though, through the equal magic of the blogosphere, that I've discovered a new
favorite, the artist I'm sharing with you today, Joaquin Sorolla
y Batisda.
Cafe in Paris
To quote wikipedia,"Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (27 February
1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Valencian Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the
painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and
historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous
representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native
land."
Beached Boats
Girl with Flowers
His flavor of
Impressionism is to me often a warmer, brighter one, reflective of the color and light
of Spain, more dazzling than other Impressionists, with their muted blues and greys. He painted everything from formal classical pieces
to vibrant landscapes and idiosyncratic portraits and has a wonderful way with
children, the seashore, and sunlight, as well as the everyday life of the
people of his country.
Mending Nets
You can browse through a collection of his works here at wikipaintings.org,
to get a feel for his subject matter and method, and also look for a painting
that speaks to you beyond the few I have included here. All of his paintings
are in the public domain, so it's fine to reproduce any of them with your poem.
Seville~The Dance
Mother
Skipping Rope at La Granja
The Challenge
Because Sunday is
normally the day for our mini-forms challenge, I'd love to challenge people to
write from any one of Sorolla's paintings, employing their favorite of the many short forms we've been exposed to here at the
Garden over the months: haiku, slijo, senryu, nonet, sevenling, triolet, cinquin, or any
of the many others Kerry and others have shared with us. This is purely optional!
For those who prefer to write in free verse, of course please feel free to do so. I'd just ask that in the "mini" spirit
of the mini-challenge, you write an original poem inspired by one of Sorolla's
paintings (either in a short form or in free verse) using approximately 100 words or less.
A Rooftop With Flowers
That's it, toads. Have at it and enjoy! And if you've
been keeping up with the challenge of Poetry Month, congratulations on writing
your fourteenth poem.
And here we are, the first Sunday of January is already upon us. Last week, I asked for suggestions and volunteers to keep our Mini-Challenges fresh and interesting and I'm happy to report that we have some wonderful new ideas and guest appearances lined up for you.
Day and Night by M.C. Escher
1938
One suggestion came from Hedgewitch, when she mentioned the possibility of the occasional Ekphrasis challenge. Ekphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and as a verb it means to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name. Ekphrasis has been considered, generally, to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness. (wiki)
Mother and Child by M.C. Escher
1921
Our challenge is to view an artwork and speak out about it through the medium of poetry. For this purpose, I have selected the art of M.C. Escher, a Dutch Surrealist. His subjects range from portraits, landscapes, city scapes and he has a style of optical art all his own. I have given a few examples here, but invite you to view the gallery of his art provided here, on wikipaintings.org. Most of the images are copyrighted but displayed under fair use principles. Select a piece that speaks to you, and invites poetic expression.
Puddle by M.C. Escher
1952
Here are a few examples of Ekphrasis poems from both Hedgewitch and me, for those who would like to take a look before getting stuck into their own.
The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so
please do not link up old work which kind of fits the image. This is in
the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be
newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated
links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.
