arrivals

arrivals
downstairs
in that scuffed and beautifully
aged row
of locked metal slots

and occasionally in my virtual mailbox
so quickly at my fingertips —
touched and touching
in such a different way

they arrive as partial stories
as hand drawn sounds
or carefully bound books
as thought text
or vocal images
and occasionally they appear
on the back
of a postcard

these works have traveled
some distance of mind
and miles
to reach me here
in this space
of wings walking water

There have been times when I’ve worked in collaboration with other writers or artists to create new works. Sometimes though it’s not a collaboration, exactly, that I am working on or at least not in the sense of there being an engaged process of back and forth dialogue in order to develop a specific project or piece. Sometimes something just arrives, unexpected or out of the blue (or red) and I find myself inspired by what I’ve received in the mail (or by something shared, hand to hand). I end up engaging in another kind of dialogue with these works, and sometimes from that, a new piece comes into being (a poem or a bookwork perhaps). These relational works, while not actually a collaboration, do seem to have something of a collaborative spirit to them.

Arrivals … offerings … exchanges … replies …  and sometimes response works …

I thought that in this part of the website, I would try and post some works by others that have arrived in the mail or that have been generously shared with me in some other way. And to also share the new works that they inspired me to create, in response. I would like to build these posts/pages to acknowledge the works and generosity of other artists and writers and as a way of giving thanks, but also as a way of being in dialogue. I will only add images or an excerpt of someone else’s work if I get permission from them to do so. Of course I won’t be able to do this if the work that I am responding to arrives anonymously or is an unidentified “found” piece.

There are certain works that I feel something of a wings walking water connection or sensibility with, even if it wasn’t something the artist or writer was intending or directly addressing in their work. This can bring me to a space where I am moved to immediately write or build a response piece. At other times it seems that the work and I need more space and time together. I might be thinking about the shared piece often as I go about my day or the work may linger in me quietly and it might take many months or even years before a response piece emerges. I recognize that both these ways of working are a part of my practice. I love the feeling of working with an awareness of pace and I don’t feel that one way or one pace is any better than the other. They are simply different ways of working, different ways of experiencing and of being in dialogue … different ways of being and of allowing something to come into being.

*   *   *

The image above is of something that arrived in the mail today (Friday, May 31^st, 2013). An anonymous tiny note, written with lovely penmanship I thought and with a kind of tenderness, and so I decided to photograph it and add it to this page.