disengaged
June 25 - july 30, 2015
coolspace @ artspace
In February 2015, Literary Critic Thom Ward chose Nadine Charity for the Critical MASS Best in Show Literary Arts where she was awarded $2,000 and her own artspace exhibition. Nadine’s show “Disengaged” is described as “a show in flux”, and an interactive writing exhibition. Nadine has created the beginnings of thought on paper and invites the public to interpret then finish her thoughts by submitting their own ideas.
Critic’s REview
When is a poem not a poem?
When it’s a poem and a tactile visual art piece.
Shreveport poet Nadine Charity has done just that. Winner of this year’s Critical Mass 3 “Best in Show” Literary Award for a collection of original poetry, Charity decided the best way for viewers to read, no, experience her work was through an art exhibition currently showing at artspace.
The “Disengaged” moniker should be viewed as ironic. Viewers spending time “inside” the exhibit (four walls hung with Charity’s award-winning poems) will quickly find themselves fully engaged.
Charity, who also has a strong visual arts background, used that sensibility to create a poetry exhibit that, in all my years of attending hundreds of poetry readings and gatherings, I have never seen before. Sprung from poetry, “Disengaged” is truly a three-dimensional mixed-medium exhibit.
As Charity notes, “Each word appears one at a time as the viewer’s fingers move over the piece. ... The reader must slow down and touch, hence the reader is engaged by more than one sense.” Lightly pushing on the vellum “releases” the words so they can be read.
Charity says she’s not quite sure where she received the idea of layering her poems. But she may have been imaginatively-triggered by artist Eric Fischl.
“I was enchanted by the way he started putting his ideas together by drawing them on vellum, then layering them and moving them around until they made an arrangement that was satisfying to him.”
Charity adds, “I thought the layering effect would work with poetry. I could hand stamp the words I wanted to emphasize and get the rest printed.”
For example, Charity’s seminal poem on being present to each moment — “When Did Becoming” — has its crucial language purposefully obscured by vellum. Upon pushing the vellum to the paper underneath these key words appear: “an instant for him / then a flit and he has forgotten / while I, slow, steady / contend with the discontent / of mystery.”
And because the reader has “activated” portions of each poem in order to experience the totality of Charity’s verse, viewers partner with her in discovering the physicality of organic language, which we, all too often, fail to comprehend.
Charity’s tactile-visual poetry exhibit is not to be missed. And, you are also invited to offer suggestions for edits by placing red push pins into words or lines you feel could be stronger or need revision. Talk about validating the viewer.
“Once the poetry was hung,” Charity concludes. “I removed myself from the poems on the walls. I had to stand back.”
Can poetry get any more creatively engaged than in “Disengaged?”
EXHIBITING ARTIST:
nadine charity
Artist Bio
Nadine Charity's literary excellence was recognized by the state of Louisiana in 1993 and again in 1998 when they juried her into the Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Roster. She won an Artist Fellowship award in Literary Arts in 2009 from the Shreveport Regional Arts Council. 2007 had Nadine traveling in Japan as a winner of the Fulbright Memorial Fund award. In 2012, her talents as an artist and teacher were recognized by the Bossier Parish School Board when she was named Teacher of the Year at the school and parish level. She was also recognized at the state level as Louisiana Art Educator of the Year by the Louisiana Art Educators Association.She was juried into the SRAC Artist Roster in 2011 and her status was reaffirmed in 2017 by San Diego based art critic Robert Pincus. In 2012 Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane selected her poem Random and Fractured as one of the top prize winners in The Friends of the Algur Meadows Museum Poetry Contest in conjunction with the artwork Matador by New Orleans artist Monica Zeringue. In 2015 Thom Ward selected the collection "Disengaged" as the Shreveport Regional Arts Council Critical MASS Best in Show in Literary Arts. She was creator and Artistic Director of En Plein Air Gallery—- an open air street art gallery that developed through a collaboration with French artist JR. She has participated in residencies with Wayne White and Nick Cave, both brought to Shreveport by the Arts Council. This year she has begun to split her time between Shreveport and a second home in Montenegro. All of this is important to her art practice.
