HiM - on display March 24th, 2007 as part of the
Echo Chamber
"HiM"
8 x 10 inch Digital Collage/Mixed Media on Canvas
Artist: Trudi Sissons Interpretation of a Wallace Stevens' poem - "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion"
In Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion, Wallace Stevens addressed the relationship between the world and the mind and the beauty or experience of nature as an end in itself. It is said he aimed to compose poems that captured the essence or inner life of the experience, believing everything 'we' perceive is fiction and that reality is an invention of the mind.
HiM attempts to resolve Hymn's dualities of thought and reality, night and day, nature and fantasy, dream state and consciousness by merging them into one piece of art. (two eyes-one mind; or echoes of imagination versus reality, Van Gogh's imaginary night sky that castS shadows simultaneously with a bright ray of light; rooster in the moon; color with black and white; asleep and awake; dream/imagination and reality.) The process of creating therefore becomes the experience he sought, along with the subject simultaneously, which in "Hymn," Stevens compels us to hail.
The irony of HiM as an echo piece reenacts these dualities and is a tribute to the poet who even more paradoxically was fulfilled by seeing his imagination becoming the light in the minds of others. Whilst creating this piece the artist hummed "The secret to life is enjoying the passing of time.." by James Taylor.
To read Hymn for a Watermelon Pavilion - please see my blog dated March 5, 2007 below.
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