About the Project
An "Online Quilt" using electronic media and hybrid book arts to explore, critique, and reflect on my own learning processes while studying Modern and Contemporary Poetry with Prof. Lauri Ramey at CSULA
I grew up in Honolulu, Hawai'i. When my Professor announced the explanation for her "Patch Work Project," this "crazy quilt" idea of displaying my learning process began to form in my head. It was inspired by the crazy quilt of Queen Liliuokalani who was imprisoned at Iolani palace on Oahu. I've always been fascinated by Queen Lili's quilt and the mix of tragedy, autobiography, history, and love for her people ever since I was a grammar school kid.
I couldn't imagine a better symbol for expressing the simultaneous love and turmoil involved in learning -- especially in learning about something like Modern and Contemporay poetry with its many twists and turns and facets, adventures, and experiences.
Learn more about Queen Liliuokalani's quilt here: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/03/10/features/story1.html
FINAL PROJECT PLAN REFLECTION:
After completing this project, I've enlarged my understanding of the interdisciplinary and hybrid nature of art and art-making as it relates to literature and poetry. From its origins, poetry has changed and evolved to reflect the times in which it is created, and has taken advantage of a variety of techniques and tools to alter and hybridize itself. Surrealist, dada and futurist poets welcomed hybridization with themes and tools like machinization, printing, graphics, and art. Contemporary poets have taken advantage of the dismantling of nationhood and the development of ethnic, cultural, and racial identities as tropes for investigation in their work. And yet, so many poets and writers and the work they create seem so present and contemporary, even if created almost a hundred years ago. That is really the "magic" of poetry and art and what is so exciting about the modernist and the contemporary movements in poetry. Are we in "post modernism" or "post post modernism" or some other soon-to-be-named school of poem-making? I suppose that is for the readers and critics a hundred years from now to decide -- there are certainly demarcations and lines that differentiate the work over time -- but this project has helped me to see how the poetry of the last 150 years is as present as ever, and in fact, is less of a timeline of cause and effect and is instead closer to a circular tornado development: the work is new, but pieces of the previous are part of the evolution. Book Arts, Altered Books, paperie, and hybridization, as well as modern and contemporary work that explores the uses of technology to advance and enlarge the definition of what poetry is continues to delight me. My exploration as an artist and a scholar into these worlds and their overlapping components will continue.
What I've learned from my research in hybridity, paper arts, and book making, is extremely exciting. As a performer, a poet, and an essayist who loves hybrid and altered discourses, I was really excited to learn about the history of the varied artist's books and how far back into history they go. Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artist's Books was a wonderful resource in addition to my other bibliographic sources. In an age when many argue that the book is dead, Drucker's book helps readers see how the book as object and tactile resource has been an important historical development and has contributed greatly to an experimental literature production. Drucker calls these earliest efforts "artist's books" at first, noting that "with very few exceptions they really did not exist in their current form before the 20th century," (1). Drucker questions what makes a book and what makes art, and broadens the definition, noting that scrolls, appropriated images, bound and unbound materials, codex form books or wood blocks -- all of it can be used to develop an artist's book. Of course, text, too, is part of that list of tools. Many of the major aspects of hybrid/book arts and text involves periodicals, broadsides, artistic poster design etc. Concrete poets were some of the early harbingers of text+book. The typewriter made the exploration and experimentation an exciting prospect for early 20th century writers and artists. Writers explored text structured as maze, language as image, and allowed for an imaginative use of paper and text.
What I loved about my own experiences reflecting on our writers and poems through hybridities and book arts is that it gave me an opportunity to not only have a reading and a learning experience through the poems, but to give my own readers an opportunity to experience "across space and time" what I was experiencing-- and even to learn a little bit about me as an artist and writer. Drucker says, "Books meet each new encounter without any need for their batteries to be recharged, software upgraded, or chips replaced. The durability of the book is part of its demonstrated value, and the elegant simplicity of the codex form is part of that durability" (358). I couldn't agree with this more. I love the idea of the book as an artifact, an learning object, and also an emblem of identity, and even more, I love it as a possible learning tool for future readers and writers. It was certainly an amazing learning tool for me.
After completing this project, I've enlarged my understanding of the interdisciplinary and hybrid nature of art and art-making as it relates to literature and poetry. From its origins, poetry has changed and evolved to reflect the times in which it is created, and has taken advantage of a variety of techniques and tools to alter and hybridize itself. Surrealist, dada and futurist poets welcomed hybridization with themes and tools like machinization, printing, graphics, and art. Contemporary poets have taken advantage of the dismantling of nationhood and the development of ethnic, cultural, and racial identities as tropes for investigation in their work. And yet, so many poets and writers and the work they create seem so present and contemporary, even if created almost a hundred years ago. That is really the "magic" of poetry and art and what is so exciting about the modernist and the contemporary movements in poetry. Are we in "post modernism" or "post post modernism" or some other soon-to-be-named school of poem-making? I suppose that is for the readers and critics a hundred years from now to decide -- there are certainly demarcations and lines that differentiate the work over time -- but this project has helped me to see how the poetry of the last 150 years is as present as ever, and in fact, is less of a timeline of cause and effect and is instead closer to a circular tornado development: the work is new, but pieces of the previous are part of the evolution. Book Arts, Altered Books, paperie, and hybridization, as well as modern and contemporary work that explores the uses of technology to advance and enlarge the definition of what poetry is continues to delight me. My exploration as an artist and a scholar into these worlds and their overlapping components will continue.
What I've learned from my research in hybridity, paper arts, and book making, is extremely exciting. As a performer, a poet, and an essayist who loves hybrid and altered discourses, I was really excited to learn about the history of the varied artist's books and how far back into history they go. Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artist's Books was a wonderful resource in addition to my other bibliographic sources. In an age when many argue that the book is dead, Drucker's book helps readers see how the book as object and tactile resource has been an important historical development and has contributed greatly to an experimental literature production. Drucker calls these earliest efforts "artist's books" at first, noting that "with very few exceptions they really did not exist in their current form before the 20th century," (1). Drucker questions what makes a book and what makes art, and broadens the definition, noting that scrolls, appropriated images, bound and unbound materials, codex form books or wood blocks -- all of it can be used to develop an artist's book. Of course, text, too, is part of that list of tools. Many of the major aspects of hybrid/book arts and text involves periodicals, broadsides, artistic poster design etc. Concrete poets were some of the early harbingers of text+book. The typewriter made the exploration and experimentation an exciting prospect for early 20th century writers and artists. Writers explored text structured as maze, language as image, and allowed for an imaginative use of paper and text.
What I loved about my own experiences reflecting on our writers and poems through hybridities and book arts is that it gave me an opportunity to not only have a reading and a learning experience through the poems, but to give my own readers an opportunity to experience "across space and time" what I was experiencing-- and even to learn a little bit about me as an artist and writer. Drucker says, "Books meet each new encounter without any need for their batteries to be recharged, software upgraded, or chips replaced. The durability of the book is part of its demonstrated value, and the elegant simplicity of the codex form is part of that durability" (358). I couldn't agree with this more. I love the idea of the book as an artifact, an learning object, and also an emblem of identity, and even more, I love it as a possible learning tool for future readers and writers. It was certainly an amazing learning tool for me.
Course Syllabus - Prof. Lauri Ramey
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Original Project Plan
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Mid Term Progress Report on Project
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