We Were Talking About When We Had Bodies

Carolyn Autenrieth

Last October a friend and colleague took her life. The day I was given the news, it came as a thud, but somehow deep inside I already knew. The weight of teaching online, the despair of world events, so much heaviness. I had loaded my studio kiln the day before with some new black unglazed clay, so after school, with heavy feet, I routinely opened the kiln. As the pieces came into view, I recall words that seemed to rush forward when I saw the ceramic forms. "All light was sucked into the blackness, reflecting a beauty I could just tolerate."  It was a powerful moment reflecting on her death, the death of another close friend earlier in the year, the darkness in our world... Was it the Holy Spirit? Was it my creative spirit? Was it the weariness of a terrible day within a terrible season?  I don't know why or how those words came, but the impact was palpable.

I had not thought of 'death' or darkness in that way when creating the forms; rather the intention had been to explore a new aesthetic of contrast with this dark clay. Contrast is a large part of my work - the textures, and use of light and shadow. The next group of pieces were inspired by this reaction and the words that continued to haunt my mind. I wanted to explore more story of connection and contrast, of hope and loss through the textures and movement in the pieces. Bringing opposite aspects together, using the spikes and holes to migrate, to move the eye, and to reflect light in a tolerable beauty, became the work. All the pieces are wheel thrown and then in the 'leather hard' stage, are altered. When I cut or tear into the piece, I have an idea of what I want to do, but in the process I let the natural fall or curve of the clay speak to the final positioning. The clay has a language of its own, the natural curves, the waver, the fall, and as I work with it, I try to respond to this natural language. 

The final piece, "Black Ribbon with pod" came together almost as an afterthought. I had several semi-translucent spiked pod forms and explored putting those with the deep black. In this piece, the pod seemed to feel nestled, as if in a nest, or protected under the ribbon waving above it. It seemed to feel like a new conversation was beginning to form. 

Lily wilting like wet silk.

Candles listless and unbearable.

You protected yourself 

and loved small.

—Arlene Naganawa, excerpt from “For the Queen of Kindness”

Rosalie Frankel

My artwork is a unique mixed-media creative adventure. My practice usually starts with mark-making on fiber. I use various processes to alter fabric or paper by dyeing, painting, cutting, waxing, and/or rusting. I then engage in an exploration of the pieces I’ve created to find one that speaks to a feeling or idea I want to pursue. 

Most of these current pieces started as fabric intentionally rusted to create unique patterns and shapes. This provided me with a good launching point to explore the themes I have been focusing on during this extended season of Covid. Rust was a good fit both symbolically and aesthetically.

It has been a difficult few years for all of us. I have been deeply impacted by the losses due to Covid, the political climate, and social injustice. I have also been drawn to exploring my personal history related to the Holocaust. Both of my parents are Holocaust survivors and although I was raised in a loving supportive home, the legacy of loss was an unmentioned presence. There was always an awareness of a void. I never knew anything about my grandparents or very little about my parents’ lives before they came to the United States. It was too painful to discuss so we focused on the present and the future.

While looking deeply at rusted fabrics, compositions and images emerged. I began to see figures related to my unknown history, along with other images related to ghosts and spirits. It was an interesting process because I didn’t create these images. I found them in random shapes and patterns of rust and then enhanced them with acrylic ink and wax so that the viewer could see them too. The pieces were not planned, they were found in the rust. Discovering these spirits and stories is a compelling journey.

No One Named a Constellation for You

No black river flecked with the memory of a hundred stars

speckle on trout, freckle, code etched deep in American soil

in creeks, blood, trees of bone forked in the heartland.

Your branch always the one crooked for the crow

new moon blacker than wind. No constellation

named after you, only a pattern of salt in your hand.

—Arlene Naganawa

Stephanie Hargrave

The Sculpture

I flew to Seattle from New York on September 15, 2019.  The following day I learned that my most recent ex-boyfriend had hung himself that same travel day.  His death was shocking to me, even though I knew he had been struggling incredibly with addiction for many years.  The brutality of his passing sent me into a tailspin, as I hadn’t truly gotten past the end of the relationship, much less the demise of the man. 

I ended up working obsessively on a sculpture, not knowing exactly why.  I had many things to do, but was compelled to keep working in the cold studio, using porcelain and encaustic, wired with steel.  It was only later, when I showed the work to my mentor, that it became obvious the sculpture was Jeff, hanging, head forward.  It seemed a broken animal, pieced together, using both fragile and strong materials (porcelain and encaustic wired with steel).  It was odd I hadn’t known what I was making until it was pointed out to me.  It was clearly an exercise in soothing my pain—something I needed to do for my own comfort and understanding.  I was paying homage to Jeff Nolan, and titled it his nickname: Noly.

We Were Talking About When We Had Bodies

Then sweet soup, melted crust and the broth,

a person we liked unfolding a napkin, each glance

like salt, hurricane lit from within.

Twigs and birds blown to the door…

Skin sliced on serrated edges, stitches like teeth,

like little mouths seared by fire, roughed by tongue.

Our fingers, keys, scraping. Bits of fractures.

Jewels sometimes fell from our hand

foxglove, windblown anemones.

 —Arlene Naganawa

VENTER SERIES

 Stephanie Hargrave

Bellies, pelvis bone openings, hollows, vessels, oldness, darkness, death, ghosts . . . these pieces came out of political unrest, raging racism, and Covid-19; time spent in Brooklyn New York experiencing the pandemic at that inner city level where the generators cooled extra containers holding bodies in the parking lots in the backs of the funeral homes and the street protests were loud.  The weight of it all felt dense day and night.  

These works came about then and felt about right with their references to bodies and bones.  They are meant to honor the thousands we have lost.  I think of them as objects of discontent - awkward in form, a bit like beautiful ghosts, slightly angry and frozen in a gesture of malaise.

The Hour Lies Like a Shroud Enveloping the Body Beneath It

-- to my mother’s mother, Kayo Hatsukano, b. 1890, d. 1935

   Whitefish, Montana

This is not your body.

Another child, your seventh, floats

in the ship of your body.

Roll of waves under the berths.

Fish in the sea, eyes like coins.

Dark glaze of the Pacific.

Moths batter the windowpanes.

The moon rose like a face,

picture bride. Husband 

a groaning steamship away.

Who thought this land

would be littered with wings?

They crumble in the dark

like bits of old leaves.

—Arlene Naganawa

Luminous and remembered: shadows spilled on a riverbank

a pool of rain, stiff sparrow wrapped in white tissue, fist-sized gift left in the earth.

—Arlene Naganawa, excerpt from “The White Stones”

I Weave a Nest of Foil

The night is sweet as powdered sugar, rotting porches.

I dream a bayou where cypress turn to firs.

The crescent moon is a jewel I drink in my chicory.

My hands glow at the moment of fortune.

Guns fire near my street, cries like confetti.

Gas light, ghost light. My bodies always disappear.

—Arlene Naganawa

Most Beautiful of Flowers

            --Death toll, coronavirus, 2020

Hyacinth, upon whose petals were written 

The rabbit, poisoned, rising to its small feet to meet the night

The white cloth, the still table 

March 26, 2020

Note:
According to the usual version, Hyacinthus’ great beauty attracted the love of Apollo, who killed him accidentally while teaching him to throw the discus. Out of his blood there grew the flower called hyacinthos (perhaps a fritillary; not the modern hyacinth), the petals of which were marked with the mournful exclamation AI, AI (“Alas”).

 —Arlene Naganawa

I Write to You in Isolation

             --COVID time

 Feb 19, 2021

 Are you cold?

 Numbers fall like rain-soaked leaves on river rocks.

 A red thread tied around your finger—

 the opposite of forgetting.

 (How many ripples complete a pond?)

 Ice on a bruised eyelid, scrim of frost on a glass door.

 That was today’s time.

But chicks peck out under hens in my storybook.

 We aren’t sick, not yet.

 Do you feel them, the pick pick?

—Arlene Naganawa

We wrote into each other’s lines 

like sisters

our poems of other worlds.

 —Arlene Naganawa, excerpt from “The Queen of Kindness”

August

The sweet peas have broken into clouds.

How the flowers’ perfume rises

in the room, their fragrance vanity

perhaps or memory, cut blossoms

spilling from your mother’s hands.

How like the blood-red peony

she snapped from an abandoned yard,

garnet incongruity against her arms

dark with sun and work. How unlike

the mop and spatula, the hands

that pressed white blouses.

A childhood month, patch dug up

behind your house, one row each

of cat-faced pansies, carrots, jeweled

 vines. Now your mother

comes again, waters the garden 

with a can, pulls out

a morning glory vine.

 How you plant and water. 

How you want.

—Arlene Naganawa

from Private Graveyard

Our mothers

weeded beds around blue hyacinth, spring

cleaning leaves of grief. Then dinner,

yeast rolls risen, sudsy washing up.

Rain fell on the graveyard. Up steps

to bed and lamplight, midnights.

Those days we loved all days—

new rain, shade of gravestones, steps

like bells, blue woods, our hyacinth spring up.

—Arlene Naganawa

Acknowledgments and Appreciation

to the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture

to Rae Armantrout for "Unbidden" from Versed. Copyright © 2009 by Rae Armantrout. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.

to visual artists Carolyn Autenrieth, Rosalie Frankel, Stephanie Hargrave

to photographer Julie Biggs for the photographs of Rosalie Frankel’s work

to photographer Paul Takeuchi for the photographs of Stephanie Hargrave’s work

to website consultants Meridian Smith and Lauren Ver Hage

to the following publications in which the poems originally appeared:  Barnstorm, Crab Creek Review, Diner, Hummingbird, La Piccioletta Barca, The Inflectionist Review, The Seattle Review of Books, Private Graveyard (Gribble Press)

to the CC Writing Circle, The Dead Ringers, and Decasyllables for generously workshopping these poems