Description
Original painting inspired by poet Stephanie Pruitt’s poem titled Close Reading for her exhibition at OZ Artcenter in Nashville. Poem and exhibition info below:
Close Reading
Ask questions both obvious and obscure.
Grow to appreciate the shadow and shine,
how most simmered pots of good vs. evil are an unseasoned soup.
Notice what is there and not. Notice patterns. Notice what you notice.
Embrace the barreling grasp of fear that can propel,
and the freedom of a blank page that can paralyze.
Know that scissoring backwards from the conclusion
can’t pinky promise an aha, but proves you’ve survived
the floats and falls & …ever after,
remembering The End is an invitation to begin.
by Stephanie Pruitt
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em·bod·i·ment: Poetry Through the Five Senses
curated by Stephanie Pruitt
/im-ˈbä-di-mənt/ /əmˈbädimənt/
noun
1. a tangible or visible form of an idea, quality, or feeling. 2. a fully infused representation. 3. an experience of transmission or possession of particular traits made concrete. 4. incarnation.
em·bod·i·ment considers the generative nature of art; how one creative expression often leads to a web of others. Literary and social practice artist, Stephanie Pruitt, collaborates with esteemed, Nashville innovators to transform a 10,000 square foot space into a multi-sensory tour of the inside of a poem. Literature moves from the two dimensional page and becomes an interactive experience for the audience to smell, hear, see, touch, and taste. To curate em·bod·i·ment, Pruitt distributed a single, original poem to a chef, an aromatherapist, an architect, musicians, and more than twenty different makers to interpret through their respective disciplines. Wanting to explore synesthesia and the line between translation and transformation, Oz Nashville and Stephanie Pruitt invite you to read a poem through your senses.
