I went to an art show: Brenda Fiest`s Keeper and the Zoo

In the Fine Arts gallery at UBCO this November there was an art show that was particularly interesting to me as both a writer and an artist. Brenda Feist, a UBCO MFA graduate, had her grad work featured in an art show entitled Keeper and the Zoo.

The exhibit utilized text elements and collage. In the center of the room hung a very large white cube wood frame. Behind this hung a mobile from the ceiling with wire and clear plastic clouds  that cast translucent shadows on the wall behind. One wall was painted black and completely covered in chalk scribbles, this seemed to me to be a practice in mark making and worked to make me feel a bit like I was in a classroom. The other walls, had quotations written in marker on the white walls.

The room felt good to be in, and I think that the show was trying to say something about how we humans are trapped by our own language. The floating cube seemed to say something like think outside of the box, to me, but not so loudly as to be cliche.

Exhibits like this are important to me as a writer, as collage comes very close to what I want to do with poetry. Indeed, I think that collage is a kind of poetry and art, and it`s label as far as this goes is entirely dependent on presentation. The question is, is the work in a book or a gallery?

Poetry, I think, of all written art forms, comes the closest to visual art because of it's nature. Poetry, since Ezra Pound, has functioned strongly on the level of image. Show the reader what you want him or her to feel.

All in all, I enjoyed the show. It was disjunctive and deeply intellectual, touching on problems of semiotics and what it means to be human, or animal.