Reconnaissance Art

When I journal, I have about a dozen pages going at the same time. This is the first in the Poet’s Series to come to completion, based on Wallace Steven’s “The Idea of Order at Key West.”  I’ve posted the poem at the end, so you can see if my image matches up in your mind.

I used illustration paper, coated with white gesso on both sides to make it water resistant, and make it lie flat. I textured the paper with a combination medium-body modeling paste and stucco paste to give me an interesting foundation for my glazes.  I love acrylic glazes, and these are build up with between 25-50 coats, depending on the section of the painting.  Towards the end of the glazing process, I mixed in some iridescent paint to make the scene really glow.  The collaging is done with construction paper, sealed with acrylic gloss.  Because my hand calligraphy isn’t very practiced yet, I used my laser printer to create the text and tore the paper, gluing it down with another layer of acrylic gloss, and then glazing a couple of coats over that to make the text feel like a more integral part of the image.

The Idea of Order at Key West (Kali Tal)

The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering,
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit was this? We said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there was never a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

— Wallace Stevens