Pinsky and Layers

I heard Robert Pinsky speak at IU yesterday. He recited some poems. Talked some about them and this and that. I liked the idea of the one of the "Shirt". To keep in mind the history of a thing. Multiple layers of history. Like there are the people who made the shirt, people who made the materials of the shirt, people who made the machines which the people used, the people who designed the shirt, the history of certain plaids that contributed to the history and on and on.

Shirt

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
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I have thought with my layered painting that I could start with images of what is going on in the world and/or historical images - all collaged together. And to some extent that does happen with the planets - using paper maché - layers of newspaper - some with photos - which is then covered up with layers of paint.

But even if I don't actually create a collage of images with are covered up with layers of paint - it is like they are there. Just like the "Shirt" poem. They are there because they are part of my mind. The images/events are part of why I make what I do. They are a part of the world and they are a part of me.

Recently as I was layering on paint - and I had started with some bright colors and then layered over them with other colors. Several of the paintings ended up being shades of blue. I was thinking about psychological layers. Sort of like the metaphor of the layers of an onion being peeled away- the paintings have layers and layers that are built up. Some things become hidden. But there is a richness which develops with the subtlety and shades and textures.

I like to let the paintings develop intuitively. It seems that with this group - many of them have become like water.
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