Transgressing The Page / Bhubesi Women (II) - from Cheryl Penn

[Marie Wintzer]

 

Transgress
1. To go beyond or over (a limit or boundary); exceed or overstep
2. To act in violation of (the law, for example)

As far as the page is concerned, I think that Cheryl is transgressing it with every piece of art she is sending out. Guilty as charged. Her books never look like any other books that ever existed, and this one, well, I think most of you know the story...

 

 

Probably hundreds of hours of work to obtain a beauty of a circular book, with amazing backbone binding. And then, one fine day, an idea, and nothing we could say would change her mind. It HAD to be chopped up to be sent out as mail art.

 

 

For this book Cheryl has collected pages from an extremely mixed bag. Law reports, music sheets, medical journals, art books, newspapers, magazines. Torn and re-assembled. I can't see the fine details of the circular book on the photo, but judging from the piece I am holding in my hands those pages have been transgressed considerably. Re-layered, re-painted, re-written. Yet when you look at the "finished product", there is a striking unity and repetition to it. Is a page = a page = a page = a page?....

 

 

I can't think of anyone else who has de-constructed and re-constructed and de-constructed again as much a Cheryl does in her work. Lucky us, we are on the receiving end of the cycle. Do you remember the "Bone of Contention" book? It followed the same pattern. One of the greatest artist books ever made. Axed for mail art. I think that there is a fundamental part of the process, of the artist's idea in his mind, born even before starting a piece, that we cannot understand as observers that we are. The artist's secret place where WE will never enter. This is how I feel very often when I look at one of Cheryl's pieces. Admiration, the impression of possessing and understanding a part of it, but that the rest of the iceberg will stay forever under water.

 

 

Transgressing the Page was escorted in its travel by four fabulous women. I don't know if you are familiar with the Bhubesi Women, the Women who hold up the World. They live in a book called The Chronicles of Lyrehc. Well, that's not entirely true. On certain days you will find that they walk right beside us.
This is another one of Cheryl's series of which I will never get tired. The painting is fantastic (those eyes will get right through you), and the poetry... well, I will let you appreciate the beauty of it, here are two of them:

The Galactic Flaneur
She can hear the Far Off
voice
That says
Come Home
But Still she w(o)anders
Making Bridges to Where
She does not belong and
Swimming in any inviting
Sea. She's what you may call
Free-Bound.
Paradox Situational.

 

The Singer to Sleep
Two turns after the sun
has set there is a cry
over the sea
a voice on the wind.
Disembodied?
No.
She alone KNOWS
in the right dark night
light is best seen.
When dream travels take
you far from here
hers is the song
that calls your
wandering home.


OK, I can't really stop here and keep the other two for myself :-)) for you:

The Distant Drummer
Breathing beats
Softest Sound
But a gentle throb
Wind on Water
Heating out bound
My beat is yours
Tread in Two Worlds-
Hers an Mine
Share her smile
Hear her Heart.
Beat.

 

 

The Ulu
Carving another beginning
Cutting off the Redundant
clean cuts
for far seeing
No more
obscurity
Just veiled clarity
As all Clarity is.
Active Third Eye
Calling Three Weeps
Which hover around her
In restless Sleep
She is BECOMING

 

 

I think I might have met all of them...

[cheryl penn]

NO WAYS!!!! I AM POPPING!!! But before I do that - FAB BLOG!!! _ MAN! I'm glad I'm your best Ether friend   :-))!!! Well I am aren't I???  The remaking process - its a strange one!  Things just sit for ONE DAY TOO LONG and they want to be reborn - THEY get bored being themselves.  Mail art is the PERFECT  medium for process based art - as you all know :-).  Marie - no - you haven't met them all - another four are in chrysalis. I hope they NEVER stop - but I never know with them either :-) - doesn't sound like I know very much today - but I DO know this - you are a wonderful writer and a photographer of NOTE!!!!! :-) XX

[Marie Wintzer]

I think she might well pop :-))

[Lesley Magwood Fraser]

Haha wait til Cheryl sees this! We are being overrun with Bhubesis. So they also hold up the taxi industry and a rugby club. I prefer Cheryl's Bhubesi women!

[Marie Wintzer]

I hope I didn't hijack my own blog from the second comment!

[Marie Wintzer]

Thank you Lesley, you're so kind.

A Bhubesi taxi? :-)) Very funny indeed. Maybe there are more of them walking among us than we might have thought at first. Look what else I have found:

It seems that they are also fierce rugby players! :-))

[Lesley Magwood Fraser]

Marie not only is your own work amazing but you also WRITE so well. Very good blog, you capture Cheryl's work so beautifully. Oh and the Bubhesi women - I saw a taxi minibus here the other day with Bubhesi Taxis blazoned across the back, so the women are also taxi owners!!!! I couldn't take a photo for Cheryl as i was driving at the time, but when I told her she was horrified as she had made the name up! You see now, NOTHING is new in this world! :)))