Interview with artist Kini Collins

Title: Blackbird Thirteen Ways

Dates: 09.21.2008-01.09.2009

Where: Student Center Gallery, University of Baltimore, 21 W. Mt. Royal Ave., Baltimore, MD 21201

...

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

...

Reads the 3rd stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. For Kini, "the poem itself, um, has fascinated me, confused me, confounded me, made me laugh, made me cry."

Image of Blackbird 2

The beginnings of the final work pose in her studio:

Kini talks about how the poem influenced her final piece and the search for movement on paper...

And Kini's story doesn't end with her blackbirds. That is, the technique she developed to create movement from layering Japanese paper together and drawing and scraping and waxing almost ad infinitum each piece has directly influenced her most current work for the past 8 months. Her new series of backbones and silhouettes of torsos and spines are multi-layered paintings on long thin tapestry-like canvases. "If you touch them," she says, "they feel like skin, they feel like something that maybe once was alive."

Interview with Baltimore-based painter Daniel Stuelpnagel

Daniel talks about his works, his artistic influences, the inside scoop of curating, and the emerging Baltimore art scene...

Interview with artist Laura Vernon Russell

Title: Blackbird Thirteen Ways
Dates: 09.21.2008-01.09.2009
Where: Student Center Gallery, University of Baltimore, 21 W. Mt. Royal Ave., Baltimore, MD 21201

Laura discusses the inspiration behind her artwork (Once a fear pierced him...) and the techniques she uses...

He road over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds

...

Reads the 11th stanza from Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Stevens' poem was the inspiration for 13 Maryland artists currently exhibiting their works in the exhibit Blackbird Thirteen Ways. Laura Vernon Russell, one of the 13 artists, was randomly assigned the 11th stanza. A die-hard bird fan, Laura's Once a fear pierced him... work is an elegant and intricately made 24" x 24" piece from wax mixed with pigment and photographs on wood. The poem was hardly unknown to her, Laura was quick to add, when she was invited to participate, "I've loved that poem for years and years. My best friend showed it to me...I don't know...15, 16 years ago, something like that, and I've always thought it would be really fun to illustrate the poem."

Image of Once a fear pierced him...