| Title | Brockport Sunflowers |
| Artist / Creator | Claire Van Vleit |
| Press Name | Janus Press |
| Place of Publication | West Burke, VT |
| Publication Date | 1986 |
| Author of Text | William Heyen |
| Paper Stock | Paper made by McGregor-Vinzani in Whiting, ME for William B. Ewert Publisher in Concord, NH |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 20 x 14 inches |
| Edition Size | Edition of 160 |
| Signed & Numbered | Signed by the poet. |
Brockport Sunflowers by Claire Van Vliet - SOLD!
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A limited edition broadside. Designed and printed by Claire Van Vliet of Janus Press. 1986. Edition of 160.
Brockport Sunflowers by William Heyen
If they could walk, they would walk slowly.
They would shuffle onto the roads from their fields,
lally-gag into our village, sway on sidewalks,
dangle their silly and beautiful heads.
Sexless, they would not bow to women,
or shake men’s hands with their leaves.
Desiring nothing but sunshine and water,
they’d peer into our shops with amazement.
Seeing themselves in windows, they’d know themselves holy.
They would love the children, and listen to them,
all day long, until the children were ready for bed.
As the evening star rose in the heavens,
they would nod goodby to us, not having said a word,
and return, like walking haloes in their fields.
Artist Bio
Born in Ottawa, Canada, Claire Van Vliet spent her early childhood in the Stonehenge area of England, where her father served in the Air Force. “We had an English nanny, and she took us on a long walk every day even if the weather was bad…so I was in the landscape a lot. I suspect that those walks were most formative,” remembers the artist. Such an early exposure to nature heightened Van Vliet’s interest in the great outdoors and influenced her desire to celebrate the landscape in her art. The artist lost both parents before she reached the age fourteen. She was raised by an aunt in San Diego, California. An exceptionally gifted child, she graduated from high school at fifteen, then attended San Diego State College and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University in 1954. In 1958, she moved to Philadelphia to work as an apprentice with John Anderson at Pickering Press. Her first book of engravings, The Oxford Odyssey, was published in 1955, the same year that Van Vliet began Janus Press. The Janus Press embodies the age-old tradition of book-making yet it also experiments with innovative book formats and structures. To date, the press has published more than one hundred limited-edition artists’ books and Van Vliet is currently working on a catalogue, Janus Press—50 Years to accompany exhibitions of her work at the National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC and the Grolier Club, New York from 2006 to 2007. In addition to creating and publishing artist books, Van Vliet has executed drawings, prints, watercolors, large paintings, and monotypes on pulp paper. She has lectured at universities and museums, led workshops, and received many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989.