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SHAGBARK & NECESSARY ANGEL Leila Philip and Garth Evans
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SHAGBARK Thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight
__ Garth made these watercolors during a twelve-month period in his studio, which looks into the woods in the quiet corner of Connecticut: I was thinking about polarities and contrasts, about how disparate things can come together to make something new. I was thinking about the man-made world and about the natural world, about what is natural and what is artificial, what is organic and what is geometric.
Leila wrote these poems in the same quiet corner of Connecticut during the same twelve-month period that Garth was making the watercolors: Each poem began with an observation of the natural world. I was thinking about how we locate ourselves where we live, what we bring to that relationship and what we take away. I was thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call to “see” the ordinary landscapes around us as a means of insight, delight and self-awareness
Water Rising began with our desire to collaborate on a creative project. We started in the spring. Each of us made works in genres that were not central to our primary practice. Garth is a sculptor, and for twelve months, made watercolors. Leila writes book length prose, and for twelve months, wrote poems. We did not want the writing to illustrate the images, or the images to illustrate the writing so we worked independently. Only when the twelve month time period was over, did we bring the watercolors and the poems together to see what connections had appeared. We were surprised, amazed, and delighted. [Click to see more about the book]
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NECESSARY ANGEL |