Spring Changes

Some years ago, I was invited to participate in a project at Carnegie Mellon University involving collaborations between poets and student artists. The project was associated with a grant to fund the creation of large-scale wall art to rejuvenate a run-down Pittsburgh neighborhood. I worked with a student who created a design to go with my poem, and the result wound up on the wall of a fairly decrepit Giant Eagle supermarket on Center Ave. In keeping with the nature of the project, I decided to design a visual poem.

As I worked on it, I gradually discovered the pattern you see below. While this might look as though it were mathematically planned ahead of time, it was not. I just tinkered with the process until I found an approach that worked, but nothing in it was produced automatically. Every single line had to be composed, which turned out to be a challenging task. If you read it aloud you'll see that it works quite well as sound poetry. No two lines are the same. I don't have a photo of the completed wall painting and no longer have the student's design that went with it, unfortunately.