The Post-Vispro Condition: Thoughts on Cheryl Penn’s Vispro Project & The Many Masks of Doc Mortag (McMurtagh/Sloan 2021) By De Villo Sloan The Cheryl Penn Boat
When gray New England life left him a misanthrope feeling estranged from others and himself, Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, signed aboard a whale ship and embarked on a quest of self-renewal. I am a poetic Ishmael. When I feel estranged from my work, when it taunts me like self-parody, when I feel no affinity to any other poet on earth, I know it is time to join a Cheryl Penn project. Thus, I joined Cheryl Penn’s vispro study in February of 2021, which has proven to be an extraordinary and renewing experience. Allusions to the Pequod go only so far; Cheryl Penn is no Ahab, I assure you. I have had the great good fortune to work with Cheryl Penn on several international, managerially complex, collaborative book projects. A favorite memory is the Asemics 16 project (circa 2012). This brought dozens of artists and writers together from around the world to explore asemic writing. That experience altered my personal evolution very positively. I came to recognize early that in addition to being a spectacular visual artist and writer, Cheryl Penn is a culture leader. She has a rare ability to assemble diverse participants, to provide a supportive environment for creativity and to facilitate communications. Yet she and her collaborators deliver astounding results, usually on time. I also appreciate Cheryl’s ability to identify concepts in all our shared work that, if explored, will yield important results. Her projects have a great relevance to the writing and arts communities to which she belongs. …34
