I've been meaning to post these for a while. During my solo show All Hell Broke Loose at the Compound Gallery in early 2024 (video walkthrough), a writing workshop spent some time in the gallery. The poems they wrote afterward have been sitting on my desk ever since. Some responded directly to my paintings, some to other work in the gallery, some to whatever the visit shook loose.
Honestly, this is one of the most meaningful things to come out of the show. Making a painting is either a slow conversation with myself or a lonely climb up a terrifying mountain, and once the painting leaves my studio I never quite know what it does in someone else's head. Reading these poems felt like getting an answer to a question I didn't know I'd asked. The idea that a painting could send someone toward Lampedusa and the Madonna of Porto Salvo, or toward an NBA arena flipped inside out, or toward a memory of trying to date a childhood friend is the whole reason for putting the work on a wall in the first place. To find out what it becomes when it's no longer mine.
You can read the full collection here: Poems from the Compound (PDF).
Paintings referenced in the poems
The poets
- Jen Fabish
- Mick Renner
- Paul Corman-Roberts
- Luisa M. Giulianetti
- Ken Stram
- Jamie Wings
- Louise Moises
To all of you — thank you. For showing up at the gallery, for sitting with the work, and for writing it back out into the world in your own voice.