Curitorium - Issue 1 - Embrace

Curitorium

Issue 1

CURITORIUM embrace

Angelica Alzona, Intimacy, 2012.

Foreword What is love, relationship, friendship, motherhood.

This collection of art and poetry was curated not by date or material, but by a stream of consciousness driven by one word: embrace.

Proceeding through this magazine I ask that you make the connections between each work yourself and decipher what relationship can mean.

-Lily Warner, Curatorium Designer

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Torii Kiyonaga , The Love Letter, late 18th century. Jean Honoré Fragonard, The Love Letter, early 1770’s.

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Kajita Hanko , Love Letter (Kesobumi), 1906. Mary Cassatt, The Letter, 1890-91.

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Meissen Manufactury, Mother Goat and suckling kid, cir 1732. Unknown, Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Tennent, Mrs. E. H. Yates, Mrs. Brandram, their Children and

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d Three Nurses, 1850’s. Van Gogh, Madame Roulin and her baby, 1888.

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Mother, Kitchen

by Ouyang Jianghe (translated from Chinese by Austin Aoerner)

Where the immemorial and the instant meet, opening and distance appear.

Through the opening: a door, crack of light.

Behind the door, a kitchen.

Where the knife rises and falls, clouds gather, disperse.

A lightspeed joining of life and death, cut in two: halves of a sun, of slowness.

Halves of a turnip.

A mother in the kitchen, a lifetime of cuts.

A cabbage cut into mountains and rivers, a fish, cut along its leaping curves, laid on the table still yearning for the pond.

Summer’s tofu cut into premonitions of snow.

A potato listens to the onion-counterpoint of the knife, dropping petals at its strokes: self and thing, halves of nothing at the center of time.

Where gone and here meet, the knife rises, falls.

But this mother is not holding a knife.

What she has been given is not a knife but a few fallen leaves.

The fish leaps over the blade from the sea to the stars. The table is in the sky now, the market has been crammed into the refrigerator, and she cannot open cold time.

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school of katsushika hokusai, Mother and children in summer night, 18th-19th century. Mary Cassatt, Mother’s Kiss, 1890-91.

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james mcneil whistler, FAther and son, 1895. unknown, Father and infant, circ. 1890.

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Father

by John F. DEan “This is the way towards kindness,” he said, “believe me,” and I did; I saw the small brown flecks of wisdom like rust-drops on his hands; six blind, sleek, mewling kittens birth-wet and innocent of claw, he gathered into a hessian bag with stones for travelling companions and swung and swung it through the blue air and out into the water of the lake.

Sometimes still I see them scrabbling, their snout-heads raised, their bodies nude and shivering in an alien element, sometimes --- when I see the children, their big wide-open eyes unseeing, skin stretched dry and crinkling like leather and above them the blue sky, that enviable sun shinging --- again I hear “This is the way towards kindness, believe me” and I do, I do, I do.

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unknown, {two young men, one embracing the other}, 1870’s-80’s. Heinrich Friedrich Füger, man embracing woman with childin her arms, mid-18th-early 19th cen

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ntury. Auguste rodin, cupid and psyche, before 1893.

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Love

by Josephine W. Johnson The unseen rain of our life’s hours, Washed in dark rivers to one sea.

We will not say ever to ourselves That it is near us --The lightning spar, the white and twisted wires of Death; Nor that which follows --But for ourselves we shall seek out Some unknown dawn; Some great and undiscovered clearing, Not all our lives endure the sound of this perpetual falling, Remembering only One hour of broken clouds and moonwide earth.

LOVE I would give much to see the truth less clearly, That I might sneer at you once more --Calling you suave, a hypocrite, Smooth-rined, a hollow shell, All the old names --Before I knew.

I can no longer watch you with cold eyes, Like green autumnal waters Untroubled by the wind.

arbor group, Circ. 1750. unknown, young lover embracing, 16th century.

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THE 5 TIPS FOR EXPRESSING YOUR EMOTIONS THROUGH ART 1. USE TISSUE PAPER TO EXPRESS YOUR EMOTIONS Do the emotions exercise (blog post here) but instead of using drawing or painting materials, use tissue paper instead. You can tear up the tissue paper or cut them up and paste them onto paper in different ways.

Using tissue paper is great because we have to rely more on our intuition and creative part of ourselves. When we use drawing or painting materials, we often get blocked by our ideas of what drawing or paintings “should” look like. When we use tissue paper in this way, we’re bypassing those blocks and using colors and shapes to express emotions.

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USE CLAY

Just as before, do the same exercise, but use clay this time instead of pencils or paint.

Clay is an awesome material to use because it can feel more intuitive and sensorybased. It’s easy to become invested in the art process, and it also has the benefit of grounding ourselves, thus, bringing us back into our body instead of being so stuck in our minds and overthinking everything.

Clay can also help us express our emotions in a three-dimensional way. We might be able to find nuances and insights that we couldn’t gain from two dimensional art.

Yva, Danse, circ. 1933. Roger Rossell, Caitlin Ciara and Romimuse, 2015.

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3. USE COLLAGE (COLORED PAPER, MAGAZINES, ETC)

5. BLACKOUT POETRY + DRAWING/ PAINTING

Creating collage, instead of drawing or

This last tip might involve more words than

painting your emotions is also another

images in the beginning, but I share this

great way to express yourself. I often in-

because this can be a great stepping stone

corporate this in my sessions with clients

for you to start drawing or painting.

when they feel very hesitant about drawing or painting in general.

What you’ll do is take a page from a book, magazine, or any other material that has

Collaging can give you a safe alternative to

writing in it. Bring a black marker and

expressing your emotions because it doesn’t

“black out” or cross out most of the words

conjure up doubts about our skills or abili-

on the page, except for the ones you want

ties oftentimes. Collaging is simply a pro-

to leave. Basically you are only leaving

cess of picking and choosing images that

words that resonate with you on an emo-

you want to put down on paper.

tional level, perhaps words that reflect your emotions. At the end, you’ll see that the

Using existing material like magazines or

words you left out will make up a sentence

patterned paper also gives us a sense of fa-

or a poem.

miliarity, which is great when we feel hesitant about making art.

After you got your poem, you can use pencils, markers, or paint to add some colors

4. PAINTING 1 OR 2 COLORS AS A STARTING POINT

onto the page, or even add a drawing or painting next to it. Perhaps you create an image that goes along with that poem.

Use just 1 or 2 colors max to paint your emotions. Pick a color or two that represents your feeling. Then cover your canvas/ paper with that color.

Oftentimes, this can become a great starting point to further get into the painting process. You might want to add some lines, patterns, or shapes on top of the color you just laid down. Feel free to take it wherever it feels right for you.

Many people get stuck in actually starting the art-making process. That’s why this tip can help you get started without thinking too much, and move past that block.

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auguste rodin, the embrace, 1900-1910. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Pietà, 1864. Bronze candelabrum finial showing a man embracing a woman, 5th century bc.

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eugene de blass, confidences. Joan e. Biren, dr. dee mosbacher and dr. nanette gartrell on vacation in colorado, 1984.

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Sandro Botticelli,La Primavera (Spring), 1477.

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops - at all And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm I’ve heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest Sea Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.

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In an Artist’s Studio

by Christina Rossetti

One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel — every canvas means The same one meaning, neither more or less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Artemisia gentileschi, Susanna and the elders, 1610. Peter Paul Rubens, Susanna.

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Artemisia gentileschi, judith slaying holofernes, 1612-13. Caravaggio, judith slaying holofernes, circ. 1598-99 or 1602.

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Marriage

by Ellen Bass

When you finally, after deep illness, lay the length of your body on mine, isn’t it like the strata of the earth, the pressure of time on sand, mud, bits of shell, all the years, uncountable wakings, sleepings, sleepless nights, fights, ordinary mornings talking about nothing, and the brief fiery plummets, and the unselfconscious silences of animals grazing, the moving water, wind, ice that carries the minutes, leaves behind minerals that bind the sediment into rock.

How to bear the weight, with every flake of bone pressed in. Then, how to bear when the weight is gone, the way a woman whose neck has been coiled with brass can no longer hold it up alone. Oh love, it is balm, but also a seal. It binds us tight as the fur of a rabbit to the rabbit.

When you strip it, grasping the edge of the sliced skin, pulling the glossy membranes apart, the body is warm and limp. If you could, you’d climb inside that wet, slick skin and carry it on your back. This is not neat and white and lacy like a wedding, not the bright effervescence of champagne spilling over the throat of the bottle. This visceral bloody union that is love, but beyond love. Beyond charm and delight the way you to yourself are past charm and delight.

This is the shucked meat of love, the alleys and broken glass of love, the petals torn off the branches of love, the dizzy hoarse cry, the stubborn hunger.

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Jay Senetchko, The Sleepwatcher.

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barbara kroll, Kiss drawing.

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edvard munch, man and woman in bed, 1890.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Le Lit, 1892.

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Wedding Poem

by Ross Gay

for Keith and Jen Friends I am here to modestly report seeing in an orchard in my town a goldfinch kissing a sunflower again and again dangling upside down by its tiny claws steadying itself by snapping open like an old-timey fan its wings again and again, until, swooning, it tumbled off and swooped back to the very same perch, where the sunflower curled its giant swirling of seeds around the bird and leaned back to admire the soft wind nudging the bird's plumage, and friends I could see the points on the flower's stately crown soften and curl inward as it almost indiscernibly lifted the food of its body to the bird's nuzzling mouth whose fervor I could hear from oh 20 or 30 feet away and see from the tiny hulls that sailed from their good racket, which good racket, I have to say was making me blush, and rock up on my tippy-toes, and just barely purse my lips with what I realize now was being, simply, glad, which such love, if we let it, makes us feel.

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