#nextstagearts

Thaw: A Conversation in Words and Imagery

Paintings by Evie Lovett 

Poems by Diana Whitney 

At the Nextstage Gallery through May 15th!

#nextstagearts

Thaw 2018

Throughout the fall, winter and spring of 2015-2016 I photographed the Connecticut River for the From the River, To the River public art project in Brattleboro.  In my encaustic work I found myself incorporating patterns that I saw and photographed, as well as a sense of both ease and peril that I felt when I was on the river.  I sensed the patterns of freeze and thaw of the river in myself, in my relationship to my work and to the world around me.

Last winter I spent days in the Brattleboro Historical Society* researching historical photographs of the Connecticut River, mesmerized by glass plate negatives of miniscule figures skating on the long-ago frozen river.  Forgotten people.  I wove these thoughts and threads into the work in the encaustic studio.

I’ve kept two poems by my friend, the poet Diana Whitney, pinned to the wall of my studio. Her words come close to expressing the feeling of calm force tinged with darkness that I sense from the river, and in my own marrow.  I return to them again and again to find direction, and the comfort that I am not alone. One poem, Rivers, Diana had never finished.  To her, it was a discarded item.  To me, it was a valued compass.

This body of work is the natural evolution of conversations spoken and unspoken between Diana and me.  Diana had no way of knowing how her words would anchor and lead me.  I have no way of knowing how my imagery might lead her.  We carry on with faith in the process of making, and with gratitude at the felicity of connection.

*The Brattleboro Historical Society has kindly allowed me to use bits of imagery from their historical photographs. 10% of proceeds from sale of these paintings will be contributed to the Brattleboro Historical Society.

- Evie Lovett 

RIVERS  

I don’t trust spring for a minute. April Fool caught the first scent: warm wind conjured mist off the snowpack, ghosts swirling into storms at night. Lightning lit up the pocked snowfields, flash of a new world shocked white & blue. Sudden rush of rain, loud peepers again, the smell of water, smell of change. I should have known then

spring meant danger. Not sweet progression of crocus to tulip. Not tender, gradual greening but a heat wave without shade, assault of sun like a fever, blaze of white light perforating bare branches, no canopy to protect the baby’s head as I raked dead leaves with her strapped to my back, desperate to vanquish last year’s mess. I should have

tied on her sun-hat but it was only April. Furious glare after five months of snow. I was never alone all winter— shhhh I’m here any hour of the night, her wail like a loon echoing through my lake of sleep. I surfaced gasping, staggered to the crib, picked her out by feel in pitch dark, pressed my face to her wet face. They don’t have tears at first, just noise. It takes two months

for the water to come. Now she drinks from a cup held to her mouth, smacks her lips at the tasteless cold, amazed at water after so much warm milk, eyelids half-closed in bliss. Outside, April rivers swelled with snowmelt. I was spring-fevered & careless, walked the old cemetery with my two girls till we found animals on the gravestones,

a little stone sheep we treated like a pet. I didn’t think, didn’t pray. A baby had been buried there decades ago but I disregarded it, played let’s find the sheep, while twenty miles away a woman walked waist-deep into the wild Rock River, one daughter in her arms, another already gone. The rescue team watched as she let herself go, slipped soundless into the roiling thunder. They yelled

across the rapids but she never turned, she simply let go. My baby dove headfirst into the kiddie pool. After so long at the rim watching her sister swim, she dove under in her clothes till I scooped her out soaking, slick as a guppy. She gaped & shook but didn’t cry, shocked at her own autonomy. All day they searched for the river mother, found her downstream in another town, miles away

from her children’s bodies, scraps of fabric worn by the current. There is danger everywhere if I am not vigilant. Knives in the washer, torn screens on the windows, ice water rushing in creeks & rivers. The rivers are the veins of the springtime earth, energy channels flowing to the sea. When the baby cut her cheek, blood welled

like a ribbon & I bent down on instinct to lick the skin clean. Tang of fresh iron, both salt & sweet. The peculiar taste of a living thing, exposed, brief as a single season.