Word+Image

+Word Image

The 2020-2021 season of exhibits in Prep’s Mary Katharine Loyacono McCravey Gallery opened in August 2020 with Spectrum, highlighting seven artists from Prep’s faculty and staff. The work ranged from paintings to woodworking to vessels to graphic design. Tenth grade English teacher Sarah Atkinson used the show to introduce her students to ekphrastic poems: poetry inspired by works of art.

The students toured the whole show, then let themselves be drawn to a particular work. Sitting in front of their selected piece, they worked through a “guided journal write” where they wrote about images, memories, and feelings inspired by the work. From that journal exercise, they wrote poems, editing and revising until the poems were complete.

The poems might have ended as classroom projects, but Atkinson made a classroom connection between visual art and poetry into a human connection between painters and poets. Copies of poems inspired by each artist’s work were presented to the artist. It was humbling, the artists agreed, to read the work of the 10th grade poets. “They saw things in my work that I hadn’t seen,” said Addie Louis, Visual Art faculty member. “I learned about my work from them,” echoed Lisa Shive.

Giving students the opportunity for a personal interaction with art is one of the benefits of having the Mary Katharine Loyacono Gallery on campus. Visual Art faculty members develop, coordinate, and install monthly shows of art by local artists, art groups, and students during the school year. But the more powerful outcome, connecting people, is one of the benefits of having faculty members committed to their students and the Prep community.

“HOME AND FAMILY” BY LYNN MILLER

A Safe Home

Blues and browns line the outer walls A trio of fragile eggs, the color of blue a beautiful spring sky, Patiently waiting for what will happen next. An organized nest, straw strategically placed all around. A calming and quiet scene, results in a happy feeling. Eggs sleeping like a baby, in the place they will soon call home When they wake up, their life will begin.

—Jordan Eduardo

“ON THE WAY TO ST. PETER’S” BY ADDIE LOUIS

Three Days

Three days have passed in the time of completion. Two nuns walk the same route walk the same route walk the same route.

The world seems muted through their eyes. Repetition in muted colors, yet still crisp and clear like a winter’s day. Always the same; The same problem yet no solution.

Shadows in front of the, empty, Dark, never changing like their time.

As the sad sun sets, the leaflets tumble by, The red and blue can lay lifeless on the cold stone street. It is finished. What they have started is not; for them there is no end.

—Pete Downing

“SAN FRANCISCO CROSSING” BY LISA SHIVE

Unnamed painting

Classic

Is the way the people dress,

Distracted Is the way they live.

Empty are the cars, Empty minds don’t go far.

The road reflects the blue sky, The line, the clouds.

I remember on that old record sleeve I saw the 4 Beatles strolling along, frozen in that famous picture. Like dinosaurs frozen in ice, they stand waiting.

The cars were parallel parked, On the street of many destinations.

The old land cries out, Where am I, who are you.

—Harrison Jones