There's a Tear (the Walls of the World) - from Cheryl Penn

[Marie Wintzer]

Mia's eyes are of such beautiful and rare green. But it looks like the deep serenity that we used to find in them is gone.
Did she cry? Is she upset?

Almost surely. Because this wound, oh my, it must hurt badly. And it doesn't look like it is going to heal any time soon.

We can try to stitch as best as we can, we can try to stop the hemorrhage, but we know, the earth is already tainted, earth and blood are already mixed.

There's a Tear in the Walls of the World, and as the envelope says, this is so true in Japan. A lot of bad cracks in the Wall, and a lot of tears. Think of all the thread we will need to mend THAT wound, not to mention all the others.

I don't even need to mention that this piece is a fab, you already know. The colors are a-mazing and the brush strokes are blending into each other so perfectly.

The format is A4, and thanks to a couple of cuts the small panels can be folded into various combinations. Paint and printed words, the building blocks of a Wounded Wall.
Tear/Apart.

Like in a lot of Cheryl's work some parts are deliberately left in the mist of one's imagination, the link to a different piece. 
"Nothing will remain of it"? That's up to us.
Cheryl, thank you for sending such mind-blowing pieces. I always fell like they are made especially for the sweet pea. She couldn't be more chuffed.

[De Villo Sloan]

See - that unity of opposites - she always goes for that. When I saw the "World IS A Town" wound with the screen it truly was: "W-H-A-T is this?"

[cheryl penn]

Hello you two - WONDERFUL place to experience unhaptic contact.  Non-haptic/Unhaptic? Has some sort of boff decided on that?  Recycling is wounding isn't it? Its tearing/cutting/breaking in order to remake. New things from old. Sometimes with scars, sometimes without. To re-coat paper through collage is to layer paper skin. Red. Yes Marie :-) Love and hate.  Life and death. Passion and joy. Red on the skin to echo the vein content beneath - MAN!! SO MUCH STUFF :-) Self- conscious ;-) - I'll get back to you on that!

[Marie Wintzer]

I think I haven't seen that one before (Sloan your memory is impressive). Could I have missed Cheryl's actual World is A Town? That's a wound alright! This time no stitches, but... gauze! I kind of remember one of her pieces to Bifidus that was pretty woundy too. Or maybe it was "just" needles? Can't remember exactly...

(I don't believe this is ever going to make the Grande Souer self-conscious, no worries)

[De Villo Sloan]

Fascinating. Yes, CP-SA favors reds. I'm concerned that bringing all this to the rational surface is going to make her self-conscious when she goes to create more work. All the same, here's where I first noticed the wounds. I think it's in her "The World is A Town" piece. This one combines with metal. Notice the clear association with pages and skin:

[Marie Wintzer]

Sensitive, yes, aren't we all ;-))

Color choice is very interesting. If Blake is using green a lot, Cheryl definitely favors RED in her work.

[De Villo Sloan]

this conversation is like skin diving. its so psychological we need to read BF Skinner

[De Villo Sloan]

oh, and the other day I told cheryl she needed to be "more thick skinned" not even thinking about, well we have some skin sensitivity thing going on. can't accuse you of being a skin flint

[De Villo Sloan]

"In the beginning was the word" - we know that one and who likes it and why - is there also "The word made flesh"?

 

Marie, I think the biopoetry discussion was on one of your blogs. I don't recall what inspired it, but it was a remarkable discussion even if, well, speculative. I recall using Michael McClure's quote about poems evolving into biological organisms, remember? I'll try to find it. Definitely one of our classic conversations.

 

I want to circle back to the part about ambiguity in Cheryl's work. Sure, ambiguity is a staple in literature and art - millions of examples. The closest I can come to what Cheryl is doing is William Blake. In "Songs of Innocence and Experience" there is this amazing ambiguity of symbols. For instance, he uses green a lot. Green can represent life, rebirth, but also jealousy. Near opposites are built into the symbols and Blake uses them so they both work simultaneously. Ether again. I'm as much into this ambiguity thing in Cheryl's work as the wounds. Problem is, what if the wounds aren't really important? Oh, they are, I'm confident they are.

[Marie Wintzer]

My last thoughts last night before falling asleep were wounds and skin :-) in a good way.... I was so taken up by the concept of Wall that I didn't even think of the skin. Of course! And I remember us talking about bio-poetry, yes, was it about Cheryl's X-ray cards? Skin, the pages of a book, brilliant! 

The technique also looks very interesting. Cheryl, did you print the words on top of a painted page? In some parts it looks like it is the opposite. I see the text as being the "inorganic" part you were talking about, Sloan.

[cheryl penn]

Identity Book.  Book of Life.  They're an Open Book.  She's a Closed Book.  In Good Books/Take a Leaf out Someones Book/Bookworm.  You're spot on DVS - pages are metaphorical skin. Books are hibernation and intimacy. They are a thought made flesh. What is more flesh than skin?