“Double Vision
A Collaborative Exhibit of
PYRO Gallery Artists
& Louisville Poets
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January 9, 2015 - February 15, 2015”

Kristen Miller, Fred Smock, William Smith, Ellen Lichvar,

David Harrity

.

Thursday January 29th at 7:00 PM

“I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not.” —Frank O’Hara”

“Ut pictura poesis, Horace wrote in the first century B.C. –As is painting so is poetry. These three famous words began a voluminous dialogue about the relation of painting (or, more generally, art) and poetry. In fact, whole schools of aesthetics formed around the irresolvable question of how close or distant the two arts were. And this was not only a Western phenomenon: according to Chou Sun, “Painting and writing are one and the same art.” In the East, writing implied calligraphy, which linked painting with poetry. Thus, a poet might “paint poetry,” and a painter wrote “soundless poems.”
As a member of the cooperative gallery Pyro, I suggested that the members leap into this discussion, though not by talking about the subject. My idea was that we explore it with our eyes, hearts, and hands. Let’s have a group show, I proposed, in which each piece is the result of collaboration between a Pyro artist and a local poet. The notion was eagerly embraced, and this book is a record of that show.
It was not easy at first. There were no guidelines. There really are no guidelines for any artistic practice, and in some ways this collaboration “The resulting pieces are amazing in their variety and the inventive ways they find to solve the challenge of collaboration. Sculpture, assemblage, painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and more—most varieties of the plastic arts are represented. The words are on, in, around, above, and behind each work in such ways that it is hard to tell whether word caused image or image caused word. This is what we were hoping for.
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We did not settle the question of relationship between poetry and art. I think it is one of those most human of puzzles that will never be solved. However, we did come to feel even more strongly that art and poetry are part of the same family. And what then is the relation? Not parent and child, of course. Nor brother and sister. No. Cousins, perhaps. Obviously simpatico, but so different you might think, seeing them huddled together in intense conversation, that they were just close friends. After all, one speaks without using a word, while you can hardly get the other one to stop talking. But such eloquent speech! When the art and poetry are good, that is. And that’s when our experience of art and poetry”

Jeffrey Skinner

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