Sunday, June 14, 2009

Vision + Words + Vision = More

Joseph Jones can get art out of a 4-year-old or someone my age. I had seen a couple examples in the workshop room and then saw the process in action briefly the other day after I was finishing doing a kids' workshop. He uses poetry as a starting point, giving people poems to choose among, which they then literally deconstruct, slice up and put on canvas boards and use as inspiration, picking out the visuals that strike them from the words. One woman was working with this line: "The best way for me to predict my future is to create it." Yes, indeed.

He'll be doing another workshop this Saturday; get specs at link above. He might come to one of our poetry readings and paint during the reading, which if it happens would be one of the cooler experiences of my writing life. It is odd being "just a writer" in this very visual environment--writing seems too easy sometimes when I see the work the artists put in--but the connections keep on coming and giving me more to work with.

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