Anyone else taking notes in an art gallery or museum?

I’m not sure when the practice started in my own life, but somewhere it did.

Typically, in a first visit to an art museum, I’ll move along quickly to get a sense of the fuller collection. In the returns, however, I’ve become more inclined to sit down in front of a particular piece or even a full wall or room and then more fully immerse myself in particular pieces, usually while the rest of our party roves on. Yes, I’m with notebook in hand.

Those scribblings have led to poems, especially those in which Norman Rockwell and Gertrude Stein appear commenting, somewhat like poet Lew Welch’s Buddhist Red Monk who kept popping up at the bottom of the page. I’m not quite sure how they showed up, either, but there they are, as you’ll find in recent entries at my Thistle Finch editions blog.

Let me repeat that I’m generally averse to poems about poetry or celebrating poets or that somehow place artists of any stripe above the rest of humanity, ditto that for movie stars or professional athletes or billionaires or politicians. We do need our heroes, but I’m convinced that it’s healthy to keep their human frailties and shortcomings in perspective.

In that regard, I do believe we artists need to keep our vision beyond our studio door. Anything less strikes me as incest, even for an interdisciplinary addict like me. It’s why I refuse to respond to political pollsters. Go ask somebody on the street, OK?

Still, I made the central character in my Freakin’ Free Spirits novels a photographer. Even having him make a living by working at a newspaper was skirting my taboos.

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The term “ekphrasis” defines poems that describe visual artworks though it can be applied more broadly. Sometimes the results are admirable, as exemplified in music by Gunther Schuller’s “Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee” or Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

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Lately, I’ve become quite fond of the Alex Katz galleries at Colby College, not just because he almost collected a painting by my first wife. Rather, I sense something in the plainness of his depicted figures and where I’d like my own work to head. It’s stripping something down to essentials.

We’ll see.

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For Rockwell and Stein, take a look at at Thistle Finch editions. For Freakin’ Free Spirits, look for the four novels in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They novels are also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.