{"id":35708,"date":"2018-04-02T15:07:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35708"},"modified":"2018-09-19T10:31:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T16:31:34","slug":"blue-nude-migration-dialogue-between-between-art-forms-artists-women-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/blue-nude-migration-dialogue-between-between-art-forms-artists-women-sisters\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Nude Migration: Dialogue Between Between Art Forms, Artists, Women, Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When the \u201cblue nudes took themselves off the canvas,\u201d writes poet Laura Stott, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy getting out from behind the glass.\u201d\u00a0Blue Nude Migration: A Painting and Poetry Collaboration,<\/em>an exhibit by Laura and her sister Katheryn Stott currently on display at the Anderson-Foothill Branch of Salt Lake City\u2019s Public Library, showcases 14 of Katheryn\u2019s interpretive paintings, each inspired by one of Laura\u2019s poems (the verse hangs to the right of the artwork).<\/h4>\n

Laura\u2019s poems initially were inspired by the Blue Nudes of Henri Matisse.\u00a0Who were these figures?<\/em>\u00a0the poet asked herself.\u00a0What kind of lives would they lead outside their existence of art and enclosure?<\/em><\/h4>\n

Laura\u2019s poetic excursions developed into a creative project independent of her original inspiration. With blue nudes as her muse, the poems explore the Alaskan wilderness, railroad tracks in Spokane, the desert of the western United States. In this sense, the blue nudes find themselves off canvas but in our world. But in the poem \u201cLooking Up,\u201d they serve as facilitators for mystical transportation.<\/h4>\n

What about these blue nudes in the sky?<\/h4>\n

The pair of them, painted like night,<\/h4>\n

like romance.<\/h4>\n

Enter Katheryn, whose paintings provide a response to the poems, a point of departure, a conversation that includes an additional artistic perspective. If Laura endows her subjects with transcendental \u201clives\u201d through verse, Katheryn\u2019s art provides visual reinforcement, contradiction, speculation, and elaboration. Consider the painting that hangs in association with the poem, \u201cThis is What Didn\u2019t Happen.\u201d After the blue nudes are identified as being lost in the Alaskan woods,<\/h4>\n

They are moved to pray. They kneel<\/h4>\n

beside a false azalea and ask God<\/h4>\n

to provide a bird to lead them.<\/h4>\n

They pray and pray.<\/h4>\n

In the foreground of Katheryn\u2019s Fauvist-bold painting, the figure of a blue nude holds her palms together, fingers upright, the outline of her featureless face beseeching heaven in prayer. Three other blue nudes occupy the background. One kneels with head downward turned; one stands with her back toward the viewer; another faces us, head tilted to her left, perhaps listening to something in her hand. Above this grounded scene, a blue jay perches on a tree branch. None of the nudes see it.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Is the bird\u2019s presence the result of prayer? Or does Katheryn\u2019s visual extension of Laura\u2019s poem intend to suggest that what prayer seeks already exists in nature? Does the bird\u2019s presence mock or underscore the value of faith? Indeed, the poem\u2019s ultimate line suggests that the blue nudes continue to pray for God to send a guide. The painting, however, presumes a bird on location\u2014nothing out of the ordinary for being in the woods, but what, exactly, as an artistic response, does the painter intend to convey about her interpretation of the poem?<\/h4>\n

An ever-present tension of influence, commentary, and evocation exists between artists. Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator Maurice Sendak once mused: \u201cOld artists like to have young artists around\u2026 to destroy.\u201d Although the author of\u00a0Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>\u00a0openly admitted to his plethora of influences (Mozart and Emily Dickinson among them), Sendak wryly observed the interplay between works of art and their makers. Whereas the young artist is challenged by the pitfalls of imitation, the old remain wary of being overthrown.<\/h4>\n

Blue Nude Migration<\/em>\u00a0presents us with a unique opportunity to participate in an exchange of inspiration, interpretation, and commentary between writer and artist, artist and poet, poet and the world. Consider the poem \u201cBlue Nude, Chapter 1.\u201d It begins with an epigraph from Matisse: \u201cIt has bothered me all my life that I don\u2019t paint like everybody else\u2026\u201d<\/h4>\n

Laura\u2019s verse then catapults the reader into a flight of cadence and lyricism.<\/h4>\n

We do not pretend<\/h4>\n

to know what she is thinking in her pose,<\/h4>\n

what colors she will suppose<\/h4>\n

to slip into<\/h4>\n

when she dresses\u2014<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Accompanying this poem is the only one among Katheryn\u2019s paintings that pays homage to Matisse by imitating his achievement of form in \u201cNu Bleu IV\u201d (1952). Here, the painter draws upon the poem\u2019s original inspiration to inform Matisse:\u00a0By not painting like anyone else, the world now paints like you<\/em>.<\/h4>\n

As a reader, I think there exists an important discussion about Laura\u2019s and Katheryn\u2019s blue nudes (no longer Matisse\u2019s) in this, our era of Trump and sexual misconduct, Trump and misogyny, Trump and toxicity; Trump and the necessities of feminism.\u00a0Blue Nude Migration<\/em>\u00a0may begin this or other conversations for you. Visit to engage the discussion for yourself.<\/h4>\n

Blue Nude Migration: A Painting and Poetry Collaboration by Katheryn and Laura Stott,\u00a0<\/em>Salt Lake City Library,\u00a0Anderson-Foothill Branch<\/a>, Salt Lake City, downstairs, through May 12.<\/p>\n