Jen Bervin Doing and Undoing April 17 – May 29, 2021
Jen Bervin’s newest series, Close Reading (2021), is featured in her debut solo exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery. Close Reading is a constellation of new works that poetically respond to sheltering-in-place during a time of human loss on an unprecedented scale. Bervin reimagines the American poet Emily Dickinson’s late fragments and manuscript drafts in magnified textile forms that draw upon the formal characteristics of their source materials and manuscripts, realized as stand-alone works or as mirrored diptychs that represent the front and back of a page. Dickinson’s penciled writings are sewn into hand-dyed cotton batting with silver-metallic thread, a process that evokes the velocity and brilliance of Dickinson’s compositions. Bervin describes these tactile, meditative works as “threshold texts that draw on the particulars of Dickinson’s language and script in order to offer the space for careful, sustained attention, and for close looking and close reading, to contemplate how poets touch poems and, by extension, readers in the space of a poem.” The poet Mary Ruefle has described Bervin as “an artist who takes everything a woman ever did and turns it into an example of the world.” This work is a continuation of a sustained engagement with Dickinson’s work, in parallel with other such works related to the writings of Ruth Asawa, Anni Albers, and the 4th century poet Su Hui. In her previous body of work, Silk Poems, Bervin delved into Tufts University's cutting-edge research on liquefied silk, to explore the cultural, scientific, and linguistic complexities of silk written nanoscale inside the body to write a poem in the form of a silk biosensor. In Close Reading, she questions the provenance of the paper ground and its relationship to suffering in conjunction with the exploitative global empire of cotton.
The Dickinson Composites Series (The Composite Marks of Fascicle 38)
Close Reading 838 and 838a “I hope you have the power of hope –“ I hope you have the power of hope – close – Anguish has but so many
throes then unconsciousness just claims it seals it
Close Reading 169 “Grasped by God –“
Grasped by God –
Close Reading 207 “In vain to punish Honey”
In vain to punish Honey / it only sweeter grows /
Close Reading 287 “Most Arrows”
Most Arrows
Close Reading 861 “A climate of escape”
to [ ] might [ ]
a climate of escape is Fondness natural to –
Close Reading 869 “Science is very near us –“
Science is very near us – I found a megatherium on my strawberry –
Close Reading 877 “Train up a Heart” Train
up a Heart in the way it should go and as quick as it can twill depart from it
Close Reading 876 and 876a “If Heaven is negative” to know whether we are in Heaven or on on Earth is one of the most impossible of the minds decisions, and but I think it the balance always leans in favor of the negative – if Heaven is negative
most enchant ing fortune be stowed upon us by a de lightful God For he knew what was in men - I remem ber last May with distinct ness and sorrow Today has gratitudes of
Close Reading 380 and “Silks” The Blood is more showy/gaudy than the Breath But cannot dance as well –
e of Silks.
Close Reading 401 and 401a “The Infinite a sudden Guest”
The Infinite a sudden Guest Has been assumed to be –
But how can that stupendousness come which never went away?
Close Reading 822 and 822(a) “Thronged only with music”
It is very still in the world now – Thronged only with music like the
Decks of Birds –
Close Reading 769 “’Tumultuous privacy of Storm’” “Tumultuous privacy of Storm”
Close Reading 853 “Flowers are so enticing” Flowers are so enticing I fear that they are sins – like gambling or Apostasy –
Close Reading 76 “Sloth” Sloth
Close Reading 752 and 752a “Emerging from an Abyss” Emerging from an Abyss and entering it again – that is Life, is it not? Could [text truncated by tear] I do her sister
spoken f[ ] with he[ ] when they surprise after her a the of her A[ ] I should value [ ] insatiable[?]
Faire et défaire