This fascinating area of art history if one of Lorette's passions...

Join us on online on Thursday, July 7 from 3 to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time to learn about "Outsider Art," a problematic umbrella term for self-taught art, Art Brut, prison art, art of artists with mental illness, art of artists who are not literate, remote artists' art, some folk art, "raw art," and more.


The world of outsider art- art outside the mainstream of the art world narrative- is a fascinating tapestry of human histories. Writers will find endless inspiration in the biographies of trial and triumph and in rich and curious paintings, sculptures, and art environments of artists like Bill Traylor, Sister Gertrude, Henry Darger and many more.


We will take a visual tour through outsider art's history, highlighting some fascinating pictures and stories. There will be some creative brainstorming exercises to spark imagination and ideas, and a chance to start or write a poem or story.


Doors open at 2.45 PM EST, for those who wish to meet and mingle.

After Self Portrait as a Tehuana, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943 
 
Your image burns through my skin – it is incised on my skull - it sears my brain. The iron rod that pierced my womb is as nothing compared to the sword you twisted in my heart, holding it up, blood still dripping, to the gods.  I am an icon, a sacrifice shrouded in lace. Lovers in past lives, we are compelled to work out our destiny, a battle to this death and the next. I have you now as I never did in life. Soon we will dance on the Day of the Dead, and you will lay on my altar morphine, tequila, and marigolds.  
 
Frida Kahlo wrote: There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst. She died aged 47, perhaps of an intended or unintended morphine overdose. The last words in her diary were: I hope exit is joyful and I hope never to come back. 
 
Sue Mackrell 
  
Sue Mackrell lives in Leicester, UK, where she was fortunate enough to witness first-hand the discovery and reinterment of Richard III.  Her poems, short stories and non-fiction historical pieces have been published online and in print including in Bloody Amazing, which won the Saboteur Award for Best Anthology 2021. As lockdown restrictions ease she is looking forward to visiting galleries and museums again; a disappointment last year was missing the Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain. 

In Search of Albrecht Dürer
(1471-1528)

                                         Let me reach through the scrim of five centuries 
                                         with the language and hindsight of today - to see
                                         what I can hold.

​
Morning

Outside the window 
water saturates the sky,
the branches are smudged, 
soft rivulets course 
through a distorted heaven.

This dreamy otherness 
with its mellow linearity
asks for the brush,  
just a touch of colour 
and an abundance of water.

The willow branches 
hang low over the stilled water,
each one tipped by a quivering 
globule of liquid.    
Willing and pensive they sway
over their own reflection.

This suspension of light, 
this diffusion of water in air 
feels like a breath held – 
when I do breathe out 
and open the window, 
the moist, invigorating 
morning air brushes my face.

Below me, in the workroom,
I hear footfall, 
the clearing of phlegm 
from a night-time throat, 
and the soft shuffle 
of my apprentice
going about his duties.

I will be down shortly.

**
​
What is Beauty?

What is beauty I am asked time and again,
my answer, “I do not know,” 
never satisfies. Pressed, I suggest – 
usefulness, pleasure, and harmony 
but never seem to give satisfaction.

Beauty, my eye tells me, 
is there in the unformed figure 
of the young girl, 
her already too tight bodice 
encasing her like a bud,
in her unfocussed gaze, 
her lack of knowing, 
much like in her counterpart, 
the old woman, the withered crone 
of my drawings,
with her ropey neck, emptied out clavicles,
caved-in cheeks and mouth drawn tight 
that speak of the life endured.

I remember 
reaching for the charcoal stick
to release my compassion 
into the fluting, draping lines, 
the faint criss-cross strokes
across her chest, her heart.

But her gaze, that vast pool 
of disillusionment, has let go 
of life’s concerns and 
found a new focus – 
blankly resigned  
to whatever time is left.

How quickly her familiar face 
had taken shape under my hand, 
as I, with a son’s loving surety,
smudged the charcoal’s soft burr
to soften the lines that life engraved,
and that I, it seems,  
was destined to retrace.

Double Portraits

As I smooth out the latest likeness 
of Agnes, my wife, on the worktable, 
I wonder what made me explore 
the “double-portrait” the way I have.

There are several of them by now,
all done over the past year – 
in the latest, a young girl from Cologne,
dreams herself outward
just beyond the imagined frame,
while my Agnes, her back turned on the girl,
fastens her eyes unswervingly
somewhere beyond the margin.

She will not approve of her likeness, I think – 
not, that she would tell me as much – 
she never lost that tightly wound look 
that I caught in my first drawings of her.

And she would be right. There is pain here,
the pain of the childless woman 
trapped in my portrait next 
to the great absence in her life.
Am I cruel to touch that wound 
with my fine silverpoint pencil, 
which line-by-line makes this absence 
become flesh beside her?

In other portraits: 
“Young woman-Old woman”,
or “Tobler and Pfinzig,” 
the pairings were dictated by reason, 
urged on paper by my entranced hand 
which loves texture of dress and ornament, 
yet also tries to delve beneath the surface 
of skin and bone to snag character 
in a pair of pursed lips, or the burn and gleam 
of a pair of  eyes.

Only one double portrait stands apart: 
“Caspar Sturm – River Landscape”.
Caspar, a huge solid man just took possession 
of the page. His rough-hewn jaw, dimpled chin,
sensitive mouth a perfect study in contrasts – 
even his eyes with their characteristic cast
of one eye looking fiercely ahead, 
while the other, obliquely turned right, 
speak of the man.

I well remember his soft cap, its complex
many-folded shape, earflaps slightly askew
as if he had just walked in off the street.

No, Caspar’s portrait 
would not suffer another’s by its side. 
Instead, I filled in a delicate river landscape, 
its shore lined with heavy fortifications 
like the ramparts of an old town. 
More of a dreamscape, than one seen 
by the daytime eye.

I was never sure whether Caspar
approved of this likeness, 
whether he even recognized himself. 
Perhaps he just thought 
I had done well by showing the intricate folds 
of his homely cap and the narrow ribbon
that tied his shirt shut at the neck.

By way of an afterthought – 
two years later, this very same Caspar,
aided our man Luther’s escape 
to the Diet of Worms.

**

Noon – or Thereabouts

There is always a part of me
that harkens to the noises
of the household, 
the part, furthest removed 
from my point of concentration.

At times, my hand 
does one thing, while I, 
in another realm, 
pursue something yet unthought.
I may hunt down this elusive prey
for days, even weeks. It even 
invades my sleep – often to good effect.

This silent pursuit along 
a fine-honed edge of attention
can lead me to a place, where
what my eyes have held,
and what my hands have learned,
coalesce to bring forth something new.

This liminal space 
I consider my real workshop.
Untouched by weather, the tempers 
of the household, considerations 
of economy, practicality,
and above all, the desire of others,  
it is my one free space.

The Dream

This dream, this vision of the night,
ineffable and powerful, took hold of me
between Wednesday and Whitsuntide:

… great waters fell from the sky four miles on,
they hit the earth with such cruel, momentous
splashing, such a fury of sound, that all 
of the land appeared drowned.

Some of it fell further away, some closer,
giving the appearances of slow motion – 
but wherever the water hit, it did so accompanied
by strong winds and a sound so wrenching, it
tore me out of the dream and left me trembling – 
and for a long time, I could not find back to myself…
    May God turn everything for the best.*

When I surface sucking the air
like a man returned from near drowning,
I reach for my pen and watercolours.

A delicate wash of cobalt
seeps in loose runnels from a wan sky,
the center column, in a deeper hue,
piles volume on volume.

Masses of water spreading
above patches of delicate ochre
that dot a bereft landscape.

Why this dread? Why this feeling
of apocalyptic doom?
What unnameable thing 
fills me with such terror?

Could it be the undoing of form
as colour drips like hot wax
from an amorphous sky?

Or is it the very loss of line,
of verisimilitude that throws
my art into question?

*translation my own

**

Night Thoughts

How rare these moments of true silence
during a sleepless night

            a silence in which the world itself
            seems to have fallen by-the-way

and yet, I discern a cooling breeze
playing in the far-off trees, 

            then, a short scuffle in the courtyard below
            as if the dogs were torn out of their dreams

much later, further off, but coming closer,
a rumbling of wheels on cobblestones,
their grating metallic ring reverberating on stone

            I must have fallen asleep just now – 
            found myself back in Antwerp – on the ship.
            Once more, we were about to be swept 
            out to sea, helpless puppets at the mercy 
            of the fickle elements
    
           my life, my life’s work, 
           the grandeur,
           the hardship, the pain, 
           the joy and the glory
           no more than the ephemeral gestures 
           of wave after wave 
           dissolving.

Finally, the sound of early morning bells,
their intermingling harmonies, 
and the discordance of one belfry 
competing against the others like a rival belief

         call me back to the work still undone,
         and the remaining years 
         waiting to be rounded off.

Barbara Ponomareff

​Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been fortunate to be able to pursue her lifelong interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement. The first of her two novellas, dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in Descant, (EX)cite, Precipice and various other literary magazines and anthologies. She has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review on numerous occasions and was delighted to win one of the recent flash story contests.

Credo
 
                  Fractal: a cascade of never-ending, self-similar, repeated 
                  elements that change in scale but retain similar shape.
 
A
cascade
of
infinite
is why 
I believe in
loops
and spirals,
subtle shifts, cycles.
My son,
preschooler stunned 
by
the science museum, 
sticks his hand 
into a glacier,
the chunk 
a broken testimony,
the history
of
a world dissolving. Cold! 
It’s cold! And 
it’s melting. Look right here, he says.
Similarities
of self
astonish. I see them in
architecture,
geometry a welcome language,
shapes
a new alphabet for 
prayer and song.
I study Peter Eisenman’s 
House 11a 
lapping up patterns, interlocking Ls,   
squares and 
replicated rectangles--
the syntax of 
ideas. For Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim 
in
Bilbao, syntax looks like 
titanium scales rhyming across curves. Glass
and limestone 
patterns, similarities of
visual texture, 
are creations of weight, depth; order breaks
tension
where the lines turn. A cascade 
of repeating elements grounds my belief in 
humanity
as mystery. Signs appear: a sound, 
song,
and syllable mean things. 
Armadillo! Armadillo! sings my son, 
the youngest, 
using his Louis Armstrong 
voice; grit gives way to twang and twang turns into hard-rock screams. 
He’s an oracle 
at four years old, an armor-clad mammal  
his muse. 
My oldest son speaks in code, 
echolalia a symptom of a seizure-
besieged brain. When 
he utters, No and No and No and
No, 
then I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know, I listen for 
a divine voice revealed. 
Cascades changing in scale, not shape, is why I 
trust weight, depth, 
height—materials and thingness: 
Saturn’s rings, the Pacific coastline, bolts of lightning,
a Romanesco 
cauliflower, angelica flower-
heads, veins
of sycamore leaves, seashells, snowflakes, blood vessels, DNA. 
A range and scope of fractals 
inspire awe, a cascade of never-ending 
wonder at both 
connections and aberrations as
well
as places of perfect order and broken patterns. When  
I consider what we  
may be reduced-sized copies of, I grapple
with insight;
it hovers in physics and biology, the shapes of letters, 
the magic of new languages, 
the mystery of cells and synapses, the music 
of my sons’ voices,                                               
the geometries of buildings and trees. 
Sometimes
I glimpse an answer, something like seeing starlight years after 
the star dies, supernovas. 
Four hours before my youngest son’s birth, I dreamed 
my sister, dead 
31 years, placed him in my arms: Take care of him, she said. He has
her eyes, ice-blue and illumined by 
God.
 
Christine Stewart-Nuñez

This poem first appeared in the author's book, The Poet & The Architect, Terrapin Press, 2021.
 
Christine Stewart-Nuñez is South Dakota’s poet laureate, is the author and editor of several books of poetry, including The Poet & The Architect (Terrapin Books 2021), South Dakota in Poems: An Anthology (2020), Untrussed (University of New Mexico Press 2016) and Bluewords Greening (Terrapin Books 2016), winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize. Christine’s teaching, creative work, and service has earned accolades from South Dakota State University, including the Dr. April Brooks Woman of Distinction Award (2020) and the Outstanding Experiential Learning Educator Award (2019). She’s the founder of the Women Poets Collective, a regional group focused on advancing their writing through peer critique and support.

The Girl I Left Behind Me

I think I will never be satisfied. I have to think up 
names for the three different kinds
of wind that lift her hair and coat and part
the sky behind her face but don’t blow her wide-brimmed hat
away. She’s been reading recently, studying the classics,
and I will never be satisfied and she knows it, I think.
She knows all about it, knows what I mean
when I say I’ve left a girl behind, knows all three winds’
three names. But never mind. It’s cold outside
and she invites me in somewhere for a cup of good tea,
an earl grey that tastes to me like it knows 
where the bodies are buried. (They’re buried under the feet
of girls about whom all I can say is that their names
and faces break the colour right out of the sky.)

Meghan Kemp-Gee

This poem was first published at Aurora Journal.
​
Meghan Kemp-Gee lives somewhere between Vancouver BC and Fredericton NB. She writes poetry, comics, and scripts of all kinds. She co-created the webcomics Contested Strip and Space Heroines of El-Andoo, and her comics and short fiction have been published in numerous anthologies. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM, Copper Nickel, Rising Phoenix Review, The Shore, Stone of Madness, Altadena Poetry Review, Anomaly, Train, and Rejection Letters. She studied at Amherst College and Chapman University and is currently a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. She also teaches composition and plays ultimate frisbee. You can find her on Twitter @MadMollGreen.