The artist Barbara Nathanson and I began working together in Los Angeles in the mid-1990's. We met in a small artist-curated/operated gallery in downtown L.A., before that part of town became overrun by development and encampments.
Nothing came of that project, except for a now-35 year working relationship. For more than 10 years, we "conversed" across disciplines, a poem or line of a poem sparking an image which in turn provoked another poem or line of a poem which again occasioned a painting or a passage in a larger composition. Eventually, we created a body of work -- dozens of paintings and about 150 poems -- out of which came exhibitions around the world, and work published in journals in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
In 2019, I proposed a new project, a more focused effort that resulted in The Shepherd's Calendar. The poems and songs of this book are based more or less loosely on the first Shepherd's Calendar, by Edmund Spenser, featuring some of the old characters, like Colin Clout, Hobbinol, Rosalind, Thenod and Cuddie, all doing somewhat the same things as their original counterparts: shepherding (dog-walking, in this case), carousing, singing, competing for honors and prizes, and falling helplessly in love as the year waxes, wanes and dies, January through December.
Only in my Shepherd's Calander's case, that waxing, waning and dying occurs on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Far Rockaway, Queens, during the very depths of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Barbara, as before, read the drafts and manuscripts of the poems and "replied" visually, with some sometimes stunning, always intriguing visual metaphors and paintings. The result is a large-format book of four-color plates and text printed on glossy paper -- good reading and worthy of any coffee table you have in the house that needs something new and conversation-worthy lying on it.
The Shepherd's Calendar (2022, self-published), $15.00.
Click here to order a copy.
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