Roz Ray
Well, you've caught me. You've overturned that last muddy, moss-covered rock and here I am, eating my grumble-pie and complaining about how untrustworthy and shifty-eyed the internet really is. Even though I use it. All the time. For everything.
At a certain point persons of a certain disposition decide that, rather than suppress that ever-present urge to do EVERYTHING, they should embrace it. I am at that certain point. As wedded as I am to the written word, I can't seem to get rid of my need to pursue visual art and find more ways to combine art and the written word. Walking such a schizophrenic, crooked path can be manic, streamlined, exciting, frustrating, sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once, but it's what I have, and I hope you find something to look at here that you enjoy, however fleetingly.
As a final note, shout out to all my nanowrimo compadres, known and unknown.
Block Prints
The Puget Sound in winter is a two-headed beast. One head sticks its spines out, hisses and spits cold, clammy breath down your neck and tries its best to make you run back inside for a cup of coffee. The other head turns coyly to the side, as if it has a secret, and waits for you to come a little closer, a little closer, so it can show it to you.
The Wearable Poetry Project
I began the Wearable Poetry Project in an effort to bring together my twin passions: visual art and the written word. Wearable art works well for me as a medium because in many ways it mimics poetry: it forces us to focus on a small thing that, for a moment, can become our whole world. Equal to my fascination with the small is the idea of being able to carry a piece of poetry around for a day. Wearable art often has a story to tell, and for my pieces, this story is explicit.
Altered Books
Exploring an idea sometimes means fronting two different search parties at the same time. While the Wearable Poetry Project is alive and well, combining art and the written word can also be gotten to by the back door. Instead of taking art and turning it into poetry, why not take books and turn them into art? Following in the footsteps of reclamation artists who have come before, I try to carve out a space to expose what might be hidden inside the rough and tattered covers of books that have long since lost the love and attention of their owners.
