STOP, LOOK AND THINK #2

Dear Reader,

This is the second blog in my “looking at art” series, written to offer another way to experience art. Please give yourself several minutes to do this exercise. One of my paintings is below with a set of 3 instructions. STOP, LOOK AND THINK before you scroll down to each section. Remember that there are no right or wrong responses, so it’s a win-win experience!

1. Here is the painting. STOP and LOOK at it for a few minutes, without scrolling down to step 2. Take a few deep breaths and pay attention to your gut feelings. Positive? Negative? A confused mix of emotions? Nothing at all? What’s going on?

2. Here are a couple of facts about the painting. The title is “September 11, 2001,” and it’s 36” by 24”, acrylic on canvas. I made it in 2001. Does this information affect your thinking? My title allows you to edge into my world and has specific meaning for me, because there is a story behind it which is unknown to you. That’s okay. You probably have specific memories and emotions connected to that day. Before you scroll down to step 3, THINK about your first response (image only) and compare it to your feelings. Put the basic information you now have and relate it to the image.

3. My painting has a story and a poem behind it. On September 12, 2001, I began the piece and finished it the next day. My emotions were tied to the passengers and crew on the two airplanes flying toward the World Trade Center. The painting quickly resolved itself, but I was unable to write about it until several months later, while reading Charles Simic’s poem, “Black Days”; the refrain about the speaker’s head hurting struck a chord, and I began to write.

After Reading “Black Days” by Charles Simic The garbage truck crawls up my street, ingests what I refuse to hold on to. Standing at the window, my husband exchanges curses with the crows. There is no end to inspiration. Sore from night spasms, my hamstrings pull me out of bed. I walk. If you know another way to continue, tell me. Brown water runs into the sink. Three blocks away, silt is suffocating Salisbury Pond. These two events are not linked. Did I tell you that the month I was born Fermi built the first nuclear reactor? It has become a long life of killing and being killed. Or waiting. If your story is different, tell me. I was the dumb kid at the blackboard trying to borrow across zero. But I could name that tune in two notes. And now this. A quartet of sharks shake their prey into bits. I watch television, hide, lose language, see time crippled. And I have no pill to take away the pain.

This poem appeared in Reciprocity: An Artist’s Book and was published in the Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Vol. 18, Spring 2004, then reprinted in A Brush with Words: Poems by Judith Ferrara, 2013.