PoemsVisual Dickinson and Blaga 2022
Visual Poems: Dickinson and Blaga An International Cross Genre Dialogue By Romania & USA Printmakers
Romania Organizer: The “Inter-Art” Foundation Aiud, Romania PartnersThe: “Liviu Rebreanu” Multicultural Center Aiud, Romania The National Museum of Unification Alba Iulia, Romania Project coordinator: Stefan Balog Curator: Anca Sas USA Project coordinator: Patricia Goodrich Curator: Doug Zucco The USA Artists would like to acknowledge James Carroll, Director of the The New Arts Program, USA, is an integral facilitator of Visual Poems and a long-time supporter of arts and artists internationally. New Arts Alive! TV, and the New Arts Gallery are among his contributions. Richard Master & MCS Industries whose talented and experienced team, delivers unique products tailored to match each customer’s requirements and who provided frames for the entire Visual Poems USA exhibition. Francesco Tornabene for his expertise in photographing and creating the digital site for Visual Poems.
PatriciaArtistsGoodrich, USA Christina Pumo, USA Dan Welden, USA Doug Zucco, USA Anca Sas, Romania Alexandru Radulescu Sr., Romania Alexandru Radulescu Jr., Romania Stefan Balog, Romania
Four Printmakers from Romania and four printmakers from the United States respond cross-culturally through a series of prints inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Lucian Blaga.
Excerpted text from poems accompany the prints.
The exhibition Visual Poems: Dickinson and Blaga presents the work of eight printmakers, four from Romania and four from the United States as they respond to the poetry of two icons, American poet Emily Dickinson and Romanian poet Lucian Blaga, respectively. Each artist produced six prints, utilizing a variety of printmaking techniques including lithograph, aquaforte, screen print, solar, and collagraph, inspired by artist selected poems.
The project was set up first for 2020, the 125th Anniversary of Lucian Blaga’s birth. 2020 was also the 190 Anniversary of Emily Dickinson’s birth.
Offering a cross-pollination of cultures, the Romanian artists respond to Dickinson’s poetry and the Americans to Blaga. Together, they create a visual conversation, a dialogue for an engaging exhibition that crosses borders between countries, between art forms and between artists.
Emily Dickinson December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886 photo source: emilydickinsonmuseum.org
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year.
While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not clear that their relationship was romantic—she called him “my closest earthly friend.” Other possibilities for the unrequited love that was the subject of many of Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney, lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but intellectual companions for Dickinson during her lifetime. Dickinson’s poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as
Throughout her life, she seldom left her home and visitors were few. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she first met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed.
Dickinson assembled these booklets by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, who removed her unusual and varied dashes, replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with an en-dash, which is a closer typographical approximation to her intention. The original order of the poems was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her intended order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures, and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued that there is a thematic unity in these small collections, rather than their order being simply chronological or convenient. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) is the only volume that keeps the order intact.
Upon her death, Dickinson’s family discovered forty handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems, or “fascicles” as they are sometimes called.
well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumors of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
source: biography.com/writer/emily-dickinson
Two Butterflies went out at Noon Two Butterflies went out at Noon— And waltzed above a Farm— Then stepped straight through the Firmament And rested on a Beam— And then—together bore away Upon a shining Sea— Though never yet, in any Port— Their coming mentioned—be— If spoken by the distant Bird— If met in Ether Sea By Frigate, or by Merchantman— No notice—was—to me—
Lucian Blaga May 9, 1895 – May 6, 1961
Lucian Blaga was a Romanian philosopher, poet, playwright and novelist, commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer highly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on 9 May 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Austria-Hungary, his father being an Orthodox priest. He later described his early childhood, in the autobiographical The Chronicle and the Song of Ages, as “under the sign of the incredible absence of the word”. His elementary education was in Sebeș (1902–1906), after which he attended the “Andrei Șaguna” Highschool in Brașov (1906–1914), under the supervision of a relative, Iosif Blaga (Lucian’s father had died when the former was 13), who was the author of the first Romanian treatise on the theory of drama. At the outbreak of the First World War, he began theological studies at Sibiu, where he graduated in 1917. He published his first philosophy article on the Bergson theory of subjective time. From 1917 to 1920, he attended courses at the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and obtained his PhD.
Upon returning to Transylvania, now a part of Romania, he contributed to the Romanian press, being the editor of the magazines Culture in Cluj and The Banat in Lugoj.
In 1926, he became involved in Romanian diplomacy, occupying successive posts at Romania’s legations in Warsaw, Prague, Lisbon, Bern and Vienna. His political protector was the famous poet Octavian Goga, who was briefly a prime minister; Blaga was a relative of his wife. He was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in
In 1939, he became professor of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj, temporarily located in Sibiu in the years following the Second Vienna Award. During his stay in Sibiu, he edited, beginning in 1943, the annual magazine Saeculum
1936. His acceptance speech was entitled Elogiul satului românesc (In Praise of the Romanian Village).
source: peoplepill.com/people/lucian-blaga
.
He was dismissed from his university professor chair in 1948 because he refused to express his support to the new Communist regime and he worked as librarian for the Cluj branch of the History Institute of the Romanian Academy. He was forbidden to publish new books, and until 1960 he was allowed to publish only translations. He completed the translation of Faust, the masterpiece of Goethe, one of the German writers that influenced him most.
In 1956, he was nominated to the Nobel Prize for Literature on the proposal of Bazil Munteanu of France and Rosa del Conte of Italy, but it seems the idea was Mircea Eliade’s. Still, the Romanian Communist government sent two emissaries to Sweden to protest against the nomination, because Blaga was considered an idealist philosopher, and his poems were forbidden until 1962. He was diagnosed with cancer and died on 6 May 1961. Was buried on his birthday, 9 May, in the countryside village cemetery of Lancrăm, Romania.
So many Stars fall tonight.
We And The Earth
The evil of the night holds the Earth between his hands and blows balls of flames upon the Earth, forcefully, burning it. Tonight, when so many stars fall, your young witch body burns in my arms as if it was between ardent flames.
In madness, I extend my arms like a flare, to melt the snow from your naked shoulders and to drink, consume with hunger, your strength, blood, pride, your spring, everything.
At the dawn, as the day illuminates the night, when the ashes of the night are gone, taken by the wind to the west; at the dawn, we also wish to be just ashes, ourselves- the Earth.
Patricia Goodrich
Patricia Goodrich is a visual artist and poet, living in Pennsylvania and U.S.A. She represents the Inter-Art Foundation of Romania and Promart Haiti in the USA. She is a recipient of fellowships and residencies through the Andy Warhol Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Europos Parkas (Lithuania), Inter-Art Foundation-Romania, Leeway Foundation, Makole Sculpture Symposium-Slovenia, AMCCMorocco, Promart Haiti, Puffin Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo. and Yinchuan China Artists Association. Her paintings, photographs, sculpture and earthworks are in collections internationally. She earned her Master of Arts Degree from the University of Northern Colorado, B. A. Degree from Western Michigan University with additional studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “ The poetry of Lucian Blaga came into my life while teaching adults ESL (English as a Second Language) in Deva, Romania. His simple words steeped in imagery and emotional context were ideal to introduce vocabulary and stimulate discussion. His words had power. Later, artist Stefan Balog’s gift of his own book illustrating Blaga’s text inspired me and became the seed for this cross-cultural, cross-genre project: USA artists responding to the poems of Lucian Blaga, and Romanian artists responding to the poet Emily Dickinson, whose poems are remarkably similar in their use of language, metaphor, mystery, and an underlying melancholy. Naturally, each person identifies individually with poems; we translate them with our own lives. For me, Blaga’s sensory, sensual side holds sway: The sound of bells, the touch of rain on flesh, light and shadow. His poems led me to experiment with materials, forms, color, light itself. I responded through the creation of prints both from textured collographs and from solar plates.
The language of art is universal. My wish is for viewers to find in Visual Poems a line, an image, a spark that travels with them.“
Long CowbellGrass Forests edge
TearsWordsonWindowsWalk on water Patricia Goodrich
Christina Pumo
Christina Pumo is a New York City based artist working in photography and printmaking. She investigates the vulnerable nature of human experience in her work, resulting in passionate portraits that intuit an overlap of realism and imagination. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Christina has additionally had an apprenticeship with master printmaker Dan Welden since 2010 and currently works as assistant to artist and printmaker Susan Rostow, the formulator of Akua Inks. Her work has been seen at Pace Prints Gallery, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Guild Hall Museum and the S.C.A.D. Museum of Art, as well as locations in South Korea and Ireland. “
Lucian Blaga states that philosophy is accessible to any person who has “the necessary spiritual aptitudes of reception and spontaneity”, the same as art. Blaga says that the role of philosophy, at the crucial moments in the history of thinking, is like an awakening from the mythological or dogmatic sleep of sense. All the great philosophers, as well as the crucial moments in the history of philosophy, are equivalents of this awakening through which the human spirit is contemplating itself within the magnificence of the Inuniverse.creating the works for Visual Poems, I was drawn to one of Blaga’s earliest books, Poems of Light. Poems of Light explores metaphysical ideas which are not senseless imaginations, but distinct views that activate a leap into transcendence. My series created for this exhibition stems from the philosophical concept of “the void”. Exploring the overlap of Blaga’s philosophic eye and concepts of the void, Blaga’s concepts are directed towards the inner human self, reaching, becoming “awakenings” for the human spirit. This idea is paralleled by the metaphysical concepts of “the void” which surround the nature of the human condition.”
The EarthStalactite The oak tree
Your hairTo the stars Where are the mountains Christina Pumo
Dan Welden
I cannot help but think that Lucian Blaga might have meditated on the music of Richard Strauss, particularly, the first passage of the Alpen Symphonie. I see an integration of Lucian Blaga literary voice echoing with the deep horns and bass tones of Strauss representation of the darkness before the dawn. Since both artists created during the same time period, it would not surprise me that a connection of the twodisciplines become one and the same. Reading, hearing in solitude, helped me create and reflect with Blaga’s words with a deeper sense. The six works I created, were in response to my feelings rather than an illustration of the poem. Created specifically for this project, the spiritual aspect of the series of etchings came without preparation, forethought or plan. They evolved from a playful hand, with a bourgeoning sense of discipline, which eventually formed the composition in black, white and grays.”
Dan Welden is a master printmaker, painter, educator and author. He has been making prints and works on paper for over 50 years. As an innovator, Welden is at the forefront of the alternative health and safety oriented process of printmaking, and is the originator of a technique called Solarplate. He co-authors ‘Printmaking in the Sun’ with Pauline Muir, an instructional book published in 2011 by Watson Guptill. His work has been shown in over 80 international solo exhibitions in museums and galleries and over 700 group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe, China, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Peru. His work is in many public and private collections throughout the country including the Amity Art Foundation, Darien, CT, the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, the Portland Museum of Art, OR, and Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. “
Moonbeams striking on theArchangelswindows plowing In quiet of the water
Walk in silence The great passage Via Apia Dan Welden
Doug Zucco
Doug Zucco is a master printmaker and educator who manufactures his own paper through his Fleetwood PA based company White Crow Paper. He was educated at Kutztown University for his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1978 and in1980 at the University of Georgia for his Master of Fine Arts Degree. Zucco teaches Printmaking at Northampton Community College and Moravian College in Bethlehem PA Cedar Crest College in Allentown PA and Kutztown University in Kutztown PA. “
I’ve always been attracted to new marks and surfaces. In traditional mediums used in art marking you follow in big footsteps and well-trodden paths. I always was aware of this so I looked for new marks that were visually exciting. I also consider the surface that the marks are carried on to be as important as the color and information (marks). This creates the opportunity to reintegrate material and idea. This remaking or reintegration is what helps sustain the attraction to the aesthetic part of art making for me. I’m also interested in myth, allegory, and social dynamics. The growth and development of human thought and its impact on human evolution is also something taken into consideration when planning works. I still believe the works are linked to the creative process, and meaning beyond the immediate association. I am relying on the understanding of the viewer to make those iconographic associations and comprehension. I have found that there does exist a commonality of reoccurring threads in my work that extend beyond the iconic, light/darkness, male/female, good/ evil, and life/death. These ideas seem to out last the fluid critical theories that come and go?”
HermetismPsalm May gives itself with sweet abandon
The verse
The oak Doug Zucco
Silencemaker
Anca Sas
Anca Sas graduated with degrees in visual arts and graphic design from the University of Fine Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca. Her international exhibitions include shows in Spain, Poland, Slovenia, Romania and Belgium.
This type of exhibition raises the problem of difference between cultures in a very subtle way, creating engraving based on American poems means processing them at a personal level, and this process tries to integrate you into the American culture. The own culture absorbs and accepts the characteristics of the other, very much like contemporary art. Bringing these works together means more than just an exhibition, it means a certain acceptance and an attempt at mutual understanding that people of this century really need.”
“
In the United States, she has shown at the University of Massachusetts, the New Arts Program in Kutztown PA, in New York City at United Nations Headquarters and the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. She is author of 37 Days, an illustrated prose account of a 37 day journey from Romania to USA and Haiti, published 2018.
I felt a funeral, in my brain It’s all I have to bring today I measure every grief I meet
The soul unto itself My life closed twice before its close The soul has Bandaged moments Anca Sas
Alexandru Radulescu Sr
Alexandru Radulescu Sr graduated from the Art Institute in Bucharest. Since 1975, his artistic activities include solo exhibitions in Bucharest, Alba Iulia, Blaj, Paris, France, Szekesfehervar in Hungary, Italy and Belgium as well as group exhibitions in Europe and abroad. “
Even for Death, a wonderful cure. Oh, what is the cure, my lord?” How refined, polite, and shy can be the erotic component of Emily Dickinson’s poetry! Aroused by the powerful presence of death, love is encrypted in delicate charades. How could he not be attracted by the modest and fascinating loneliness of this woman descended from another age. At an older age than she wrote her poems, I naturally empathize with her favorite themes: the inexorable flow of time, the fragility of the human being, the perpetual oscillation between love and death. I am amazed at how cultural affinities cancel out the space and time that separates us. The magic by which, in a modern way, the artist calls all the senses to incarnate in the word made it easier for me to translate her lyrics into images (maybe a little too narrative compared to the metaphorical density of her poems).”
I heard a fly buzz I lost a world-the other day Lungeons must be very careful
Would you like summer The Bible is an antique volume This quiet dust was gentlemen and Alexandruladies Radulescu Sr
Alexandru Radulescu Jr
Alexandru Radulescu Jr. received his graduate education at the University of Arts and Design, Cluj Napoca, where he garnered his Master’s Degree and PhD in Art. At present he is an Assistant Professor of Photo-Video-Digital Image Processing at the University of Art and Design (UAD) ClujNapoca. In 2011, he was presented in the Vice Chancellor’s Lecture Series, University of Salford, by the University of Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca.
Faced with a real challenge, I chose to shape the “atmosphere” of the poems and less to illustrate the richness of visual suggestions present in the work of Emly Dickinson.
The chosen technique, the monotype, I considered to fit perfectly on the range of feelings and soul feelings that emanate from Emily’s Thepoems.curtain of fog, inherent in the monotype, suggests the discreet and modest revelation of the author’s self. The spontaneity specific to this technique mirrors the freshness of the lyrics that inspired me. The timeless and at the same time current aspect of the characters chosen by me I hope will give the measure of the modernism of Emily Dickinson’s poems and their perennial value.“
“
Come Slowly—Eden A man may make a remark Fame is a fickle food
The soul select her own society I’m nobody, who are you Luck is not chance Alexandru Radulescu Jr
Stefan Balog
Stefan Balog studied at Bethlen Gabor College from Aiud and at the School of Art from Alba Iulia, as well Art and Architecture at the Eminescu Center/American University of Bucharest. In December of 2007 he finished the Popa’s Academy in Timisoara for graphics and studied engraving techniques with the Hungarian master Kantor Janos.
“
Emily Dickinson seen from the perspective of the Romanian graphic artists is compensated by the interpretation of Lucian Blaga by the American graphic artists. A challenge that demonstrates a special cultural partnership and mutual respect for national cultural values.”
Balog was mentored in art philosophy by the Indian master Chiru Chakravarty. He exhibits internationally. Balog is the president and founder of the Inter-Art Foundation, an art institution based in his hometown Aiud, Romania.
This beautiful project was born by chance, after meeting wonderful people. A meeting on American soil, where at one point he mentioned Lucian Blaga. From here until a bilateral artistic collaboration was only one step. Eight graphic designers, eight unique visions, two relatively different cultures, two nationally-renowned poets - these are the ingredients for a unique project that proposes high-level artist cooperation.
He received the Order of Cultural Merit in the rank of Knight granted by His Excellency Klaus Werner Iohannis, President of Romania. (Presidential Administration, Cotroceni Palace, Bucharest. January 13, 2022).
Because I could not stay for Death A bird came down the walk A drop fell on the Apple tree
Two butterlies went Besides the Autumn Safe in the alabaster chambers Stefan Balog
Album concept: Robert Lixandru Editors: The “Liviu Rebreanu” Multicultural Center Aiud, Romania The “Inter-Art” Foundation Aiud, Romania Collection: “Visual Art” Coordinator: Ioan Hădărig The description of the CIP can be consulted on the website of the National Library of Romania Visual Poems: Dickinson and Blaga An International Cross Genre Dialogue By Romania & USA Printmakers
2022