Studio visit: Brece Honeycutt

Dara and James write:

The history of modern art features many groundbreaking collaborations between artists and poets. "Inventing Abstraction," the exhibition now on view at the Museum of Modern Art, includes several examples of such collaborations. One favorite is La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, by the poet Blaise Cendrars and the painter Sonia Delaunay. More recently there was Breath, a collaboration in the early 1980s between the sculptor Christopher Wilmarth and the poet Frederick Morgan, who had translated seven poems by Mallarmé. Poets House maintains a collection of many additional examples. 

The Bushwick nonprofit Norte Maar, which is dedicated to "collaborative projects in the arts," has now underwritten a number of publications bringing artists and poets together. When the artist Brece Honeycutt was selected for an upcoming project, she approached Dara to contribute original poetry (Brece had heard Dara read at Norte Maar's celebration of John Cage.) Their book is slated for publication this spring. 

As Brece works through ideas for the book, she welcomed us at her studio in Sheffield, Massachusetts. 

Brece works in an antique barn that was transported from Vermont and recently reclad in a new timber facade. The light above was repurposed from a nearby train station. (All photographs by James Panero.)

The light-filled workspace overlooks a small pond that used to be the town's skating rink.

Brece works in a variety of media. Spools of yarn, vintage washboards, books on flowers, and papery wasps nests are all integrated into her diverse practice.  

Brece has many projects going on in her studio. Here she is at her loom creating a rag rug.

Brece spins and knits her own fiber sculptures. 

For our collaboration, Brece is using various plants, vegetables, and objects to hand dye paper. 

Brece makes her own dyes from leaves and plants she has collected in the area. Here the leaves are soaking in water, which will be used to stain the pages. 

Goldenrod, drying in the attic, will be used for additional dyes. 

Once Brece has the stains, she adds additional objects as resists and presses the pages together overnight. When she opens them up, she discovers how the foliage and other elements have left their marks on the paper. 

On one wall Brece has pinned prototypes for the book. Here Brece has written out one of Dara's poems on hand-made paper (above) and hand-stitched the binding of some pages (below). Dara and Brece are experimenting with different page formats and working through ideas of how best to translate Brece's handmade book art to multiple production. 

Brece and Dara look over pages in production. Brece's stand-along paper sculptures hang on the back wall.

A panorama of Brece's studio. 

Prayer in a Bottle

Dara writes:

Last night I had the honor of participating in the final performance of Cage Transmitted, the conclusion of a year long celebration of John Cage organized by Jason Andrew's Norte Maar. 

I was joined on stage at the English Kills Gallery (114 Forrest Street, Bushwick) by Jason Andrew, John Driscoll, Mika Gellman, Rebecca Goyette, Andrew Hurst, Julie Fotheringham, William Powhida, Paradise Club, Reverend Vince Anderson and DJ jojoSOUL

A short section of the forty-five minute performance is above. As part of the reading, I included some of my original work, and I am delighted to publish one of them for the first time here. 

PRAYER IN A BOTTLE
by Dara Mandle

I'm calling Walt Whitman,
curve and shelter,

calling river and silt
I rinse from my skin.

I'm calling Virginia Woolf,
young monarch, from milkweed.

I'm calling a flock of rooks
to flight, calling Frank O'Hara,

each August, from Long Island
Must call Henri Bergson

and Vergil, must call Keats
before tomorrow morning.

What we hope ever
to do with ease, we may learn

first to do with diligence,
wrote Samuel Johnson,

whom I call,
each day I call.

Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the National Arts Club

Dara writes:

Please join me as I host the Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the famous National Arts Club on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 8pm. This event is free and open to the public. The National Arts Club is located at 15 Gramercy Park South (20th Street between Park Avenue South and Irving Place). Number 6 Train at 23rd Street

This year's reading features Dan Chiasson and Brenda Shaughnessy.

Dan Chiasson is the author of four books, most recently a book of poetry, Where’s the Moon, There’s the Moon (Knopf, 2010). He is the poetry critic for The New Yorker and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Chiasson received a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph. D. from Harvard University. He is Associate Professor of English at Wellesley College.

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Human Dark with Sugar, which was a finalist for the 2008 NBCC Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy. Her third book, Our Andromeda, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, McSweeney's, The Nation, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Yale Review and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor at Rutgers-Newark and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and daughter.

UPDATE! 

Thank you everyone who came out for this special evening!

Dara introduces the Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the National Arts Club. 

The poets Brenda Shaughnessy and Dan Chiasson with host Dara Mandle at the National Arts Club.