Dear Readers,

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In this issue, TAS presents three artists whose work has a performative aspect. One of the pleasures of publishing on the internet is that it allows for the inclusion of sound and movement, inviting a fuller experience with these artists.

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Sara Buoso writes on William Kentridge’s work and history. Kentridge’s drawing process of erasure and redrawing has always had a performative and cinematic aspect. During the pandemic, Kentridge made a series of nine films titled Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot in which the artist creates new works in conversation with his process, his drawings and himself. He reveals an aspect of this process in a 2009 quotation on his studio’s site:

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“Walking, thinking, stalking the image. Many of the hours spent in the studio are hours of walking, pacing back and forwards across the space gathering the energy, the clarity to make the first mark. It is not so much a period of planning as a time of allowing the ideas surrounding the project to percolate. A space for many different possible trajectories of an image, of a sequence to suggest themselves, to be tested as internal projections. This pacing is often in relation to the sheet of paper waiting on the wall. As if the physical presence of the paper is necessary for the internal projections to seem realisable. The physical size and material enforces a scale, a particular starting point, a composition. The myriad of possibilities is called to order. This pacing is sometimes ten minutes, sometimes a morning. (And the pacing is sometimes replaced by sharpening of pencils, gathering of materials, hunting for just the right music – all different forms of productive procrastination).”

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Georgia Artist Luzene Hill makes sculptures that she brings to life by performing with them. In his dialogue with Hill for TAS, Atlanta writer Andrew Alexander reveals the content of her work through his gentle questions. Her performances reflect on violence towards women and the consequences of trauma. Hill is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Her sculptures are magnificent. When she performs with, and in them, a kind of mystical presence ensues, imprinting additional meanings on the work.

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Poet Dawn Skorczewski presents a conversation with fellow poet Elizabeth Bradfield, who is also a naturalist, editor, teacher, theorist, and activist. For TAS, Bradfield reads three poems. I often find poetry to be more poignant when hearing the poet read. Hearing the pace, diction and rhythms of the poet’s voice, things I cannot derive from just reading the work, carries me into a new realm of understanding. I am so pleased that these two poets pay tribute to Alicia Ostriker, who read her poems and conversed with Nicolette Reim in 2020, when  dialogues with poets originated in TAS. Many things changed for artists and writers during the pandemic. These Dialogues in The Art Section are one of the positive outcomes of that time.

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All my best,

Deanna 

Deanna Sirlin

Editor-in-Chief

The Art Section