Sneak Previews of VISPO Collaborative Books

[cheryl penn]

Please put up your work as you go so we can all be inspired and excited :-)!

[cheryl penn]

Nancy - FAB!!!! I REALLY like this :-) - I also like your addition of information on Baron informing your work - looking FORWARD to the next phase/shift - is there a need?? Its already looking good! Maybe the shift can occur in the pages themselves? IE if this is your first page, maybe your work is about your exploration  and subsequent progression? JUST a suggestion - GREAT!!!! :-) XX

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Hmm. Interesting suggestion. Thanks, BP ...

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Oh yes, Nancy...i agree, that would be a beautiful first page you have there!

Me working toward completion...have the middle spread and added strings.

(Nancy, i shall save your hand made pulp papers to use for another project...

this Vispo Onewill be smooth and blueeee)

[cheryl penn]

Katerina - a few lines on your inspiration? I think I'm collecting them - looking forward!!! :-) X

[De Villo Sloan]

[cheryl penn]

Jeepers De Villo - is that yours? - Looks GREAT!!! What ELSE have you got up your sleeve? ;-) XXX

[DKeys]

Wowww!!!  This is excellent. Dean might see these as barcodes-I love how the ssssssssssssss es join into an infinity symbol in the middle. feast for the eyes!

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

EL GRECO - Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος - Domenikos Theotokopoulos - (1541-1614) His name, his Greek name, is visual poetry on its own, and transcribed into English, divided into syllables, it becomes vispo.  Details of his paintings with flowing robes, elongated hands, arms, legs, expressive faces, all add to the visual poetry that is El Greco. Some details in my pages vary as I selected "flowing" elements to compliment the poetics, no two "chapters" are the same. Consistent to all chapters of "El Greco" is the middle fold, which has a detail of the faces of the Apostles from the "Pentecost" (1597-1600) in the Prado Museum, Madrid. And all chapters also have small scale images of "Toledo" (1596-1600) and "Portrait of a Man" (1595-1600), both  in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Domenikos Theotokopoulos was born on the Greek Island of Crete in 1541, which was then under Venetian rule. His early artistic training was with a Cretan artist working in the Byzantine tradition, painting religious icons. About 1560, he arrived in Venice and was influenced by the art of Titian, Tintoretto and others. He also saw the art of Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome. By 1577 he went to Spain and settled in Toledo where he spent the rest of his life. His manneristic style, elongation, and unusual foreshortening makes his work almost "modern" in today's world. Until the very end of his carer, he always signed his art in Greek: Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος.

[cheryl penn]

Katerina - thank you for this - he is DEFINITELY one of my favorites too :-) - I LOVE your explanation - thank you - will be reading it again when I get your work to help open it out - thank you for taking the trouble :-) X

[De Villo Sloan]

Dear Vispoets, these previews are an inspiration. I think these are going to be amazing books. The more I can see, the better. I'm writing the intros.

Angie - Wisconsin is such a center of vispo I'm renaming it Vis-Consin. You heard it here first!

Diane Keys raised a really interesting question on her blog. It's connected to the idea of selecting and ordering the pages for book chapters. I've noticed this in visual poetry generally:

1) You can arrange pages in random or and leave it to chance. That's always interesting but

2) There is the idea of Cereal (Serial) Visual Poetry where you look at larger patterns of images and themes from poem to poem. If you look at that closely, you can start to arrange the poems so they form a sort of narrative or sequence that ties the pieces together so they work even more effectively and have continuity. I think if you look at your pages closely, you can find really interesting ways to sequence them.

No what I mean?

Just a thought.

[Svenja Wahl]

4 ready, 12 to go  - here's a little preview, inspired by german artist Gerhard Richter ...

[cheryl penn]

Ok - this is GREAT!!!! This project is going to be inspirational to ALL Vispoets :-) X