| Title | Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry |
| Artist / Creator | Anita Bigelow |
| Place of Publication | Portland, OR |
| Publication Date | 2012 |
| Author of Text | Howard Nemerov |
| Medium / Materials | Gouache on Arches Text Wove. Paper was treated with black acrylic and matte medium, permanent stamp pad ink, white gel pen and joss paper. |
| Paper Stock | Arches Text Wove |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 20.625 x 10 x 1.325 inches |
| Edition Size | Unique |
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry by Anita Bigelow
$500.00 -
Please contact 23 Sandy for current availability.
My favorite poem about poetry is Howard Nemerov’s Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, a definition by shimmering example. I wanted to capture the poem’s implied color range from "freezing drizzle" to the snow, "random, white and slow." This presented a challenge of contrast as any color used for the text didn’t show up well on the blacks, the whites, and the grays, especially the grays. I ended up weaving in the grays, including the ones made by alphabet rubber stamps, so that the grays would accompany but not sit under the text.
Artist Bio
For the poetry, Anita Bigelow, née Lourié, was a literature major at Reed College and then, ten years later, at Portland State University. For the pen, Anita originally studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds at Reed. She briefly attended the San Francisco Art Institute as a printmaker and there had the good fortune to take a typography class from Jack Stauffacher. Through the years, she was, alas, not assiduous in her practice of calligraphy until recently -- when she enjoyed classes from Rebecca Wild, Carol DuBosch, and Colleen Cavin. She now intends always to practice and to take calligraphy classes. These good intentions (the road to heaven, surely) combine with another fairly recent love: that of book binding and the possibility of making artists books, a love discovered in a PSU book arts class taught by Susan Harlan. In her other, pre-retirement lives, Anita taught in alternative schools, worked in a restaurant kitchen, and was a computer programmer and systems administrator. She also worked as a copywriter and illustrator.