Exploring Where Visual Art & Poetry Come From with Denise Weaver Ross
If you’ve ever experienced change, then poetry by Denise Weaver Ross is for you.
If you’ve ever enjoyed color, symbol and exquisite imagination, then art by Denise Weaver Ross is for you.
If you’ve ever wondered where poetry and art come from, then the presentation by Denise Weaver Ross at Creatives in Conversation on Wednesday, October 6 is for you.
Denise’s poetry, art and presentation offer a map for the journey we call life, with plenty of rest stops to refresh and rejuvenate.
Whether we must face the Storage/Garage Giant that has kept us captive for years with the stuff memories are made of, or whether we are reliving past joys housed in our minds and hearts, Denise’s poems are there saying, “I’m with you.”
In Letters to the Deceased and Other Missives (Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2020), Denise writes to those she has loved and lost to death as well as to those whom are still living but are held in memory after memory, and how she makes a present life among the ceaseless moments of the past.
She writes with compassion and tenderness about her life and to us, a community of humans journeying alone, except for what we take with us, that which remains within us.
In “The Shape of Things” she writes:
It’s been nearly half a century
since we met and challenged
each other to pursue lives
of fierce independence.
Yet we were so anchored that
we carried our mothers with us
up and out into the broad world.
Now we hold them in a final embrace,
not yet laying them gently in the earth,
they who nourished the expanse of our reach.
(lines 8-17, page 70)
Denise lyrically articulates how memories can be anchors in the storms of life, holding us firmly to love, but they can also be weights that slow our move forward in life.
In “Marking Time,” she writes:
I have now lived in the same house
for fourteen years, a personal record.
It contains my uncle’s pottery,
children’s books and toys,
father’s fly fishing rod,
sister’s couch, mother’s china,
parents’ piano, and late husband’s
journals and mix tapes.
…
I have fallen deeply in love four times,
given birth to and raised two sons,
grieved for grandparents, husband, father and sister,
and created hundreds of pieces of art and poetry.
Tomorrow, I will continue to transform
a full house and a full life into manageable chaos.
(lines 17-24 and lines 30-35, pages 100-101)
Yet, she acknowledges that we do move forward, and our lives, while memory-laden, are our lives to live. She writes in “Mom at Eighty-One”:
Now, eighty-one, my two babies,
grown and in college
and my sister’s daughter dancing
her way through Nebraska,
Mom spends her time working
and redoing the eastside garden,
planning the future.
(lines 43-49, page 23)
The depth of her poetry echoes the depth of grief everlasting. As she writes in “Cobalt,” a poem that suggests that though there is a reason to the puzzle of our lives, still, grief is real:
When they left the parrot
for their final trip back to the Congo,
he stopped speaking and in mourning
tore out his beautiful red tail feathers.
(lines 29-32, page 59)
Color-filled, symbolic art is Denise’s style. She has created murals, book covers, tarot cards and wall art.
In “My Sister’s Dress”, Denise writes about her sorting through her deceased sister’s clothes, “…classic jackets, her tailored-looking/trousers and corporate-style skirts (lines 7-8, page 52).” She adds:
Then among her clothes I discovered
a red, purple, and gold sari-like
gauzy creation with an ornate, heavily
beaded bodice, and purple pantaloons.
I wanted to be able to send her a photo
on the celestial phone just to hear the story.
…
Instead, I wore it to an art opening;
the colors match my paintings.
(lines 9-14 and lines 20-21, page 52)
Yes, saturated, vibrant, living, dancing colors grace Denise’s art. Before my mind registers what figures I am viewing, my eyes rejoice in the joy of color.
And then, figures merge and separate, forming symbolic images such as goddesses, trees, birds, flowers, mammals, stars, moon, people—all with iconic elements and marvelous mystical messages.
Garden of the Muses Mural by Denise Weaver Ross
Located at The Source Forest, Albuquerque, NM
Photo courtesy Denise Weaver Ross
If you ever feel alone in the changes and losses that fill life’s journey—and if you’d like to add color to your life—you can find some solace, compassion and joy in the poetry and visual art by Denise Weaver Ross.
At Creatives in Conversation on Wednesday, October 6 at 5:30 pm MT, Denise will be presenting on “Visual Art and Poetry: Where Do They Come From?”
You can meet her at this Zoom event. There also will be a Q & A with Denise.
Please join us!
In her own words, as follows, Denise writes of her presentation “Visual Art & Poetry: Where Do They Come From?” by Denise Weaver Ross:
“Where do these expressions come from and how are they different?
This poem from my recent book of poetry, Letters to the Deceased and Other Missives, gives one clue on how I find the practice of poetry different from making art.
The Secret Lives of Poets
All my poems about my husband
came after he died
After twenty years of keeping
journals, I stopped when I married,
because he would read them,
and sometimes I would write
about him, so instead I made
visual poems with color and form.
In artwork, I am able to create
complex nuanced truth.
In my poetry journals,
the raw unfiltered emotion
is plainly visible before
I cut, trim and shape words
to find the inner truth
of the matter.
But he would read the scraps
left behind and they would cut him.
Letters to the Deceased and Other Missives was my first book of poetry without any images. It consists of group of narrative poems, a kind of poetic memoir of the artist/poet’s life.
The House of Cards: The Whole Deck combines previously released volumes of art and poetry. Each one had represented a suite in my House of Cards series where I reimagined a deck of cards in 56 large-scale works-on-paper in which spades become bones and fossils; diamonds become stars, heavenly bodies and constellations; clubs become trees both real and symbolic; and hearts explore my personal experiences in the matters of the heart using Tarot and Egyptian imagery.
Comparing the first image to the first poem in the series shows clearly how art and poetry can differ when handling similar subjects:
The artwork goes deep into the layers of an individual image.
The poem brings together several events (and images) together
and ends with a single image.
The following work of art was inspired by my late husband who died in 2001 from complications of sickle cell disease, a lifelong blood disorder that causes bouts of severe pain.
The card has a background pattern created by sickled blood and also refers to Egyptian mythology. The poem ends with his and my father’s deaths (one year apart), and the first three stanzas refer to the near-death experiences of our two sons.”
Cerulean Blue
Pain in the blues of hospital gowns,
stripes on a newborn baby blanket.
Pain codes blue with alarms, thunders
with pairs of white sneakers down long
corridors, shivers under navy hospital
covers, waiting to hold a baby swollen—
alien with countless wires and tubes.
Pain turns lips from purple to indigo
in a driveway waiting for sirens to grow
louder than the thundering of my heart.
Pain pulsates in blue fluorescent lights
in the silence of an emergency room
when the monitors have gone still.
Pain is the cerulean blue of summer skies,
high and hot above ashes in a rose garden.
NOTE: All poem excerpts quoted are from Letters to the Deceased and Other Missives by Denise Weaver Ross (Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2020).
The poem “Cerulean Blue” is the first poem from The House of Cards: The Whole Deck by Denise Weaver Ross (Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2020) and was provided by Denise Weaver Ross.
The poem “The Secret Life of Poets” is on page 17 of Letters to the Deceased and Other Missives by Denise Weaver Ross (Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2020) and was provided by Denise Weaver Ross.
In her own words about her presentation Visual Art & Poetry: Where Do They Come From? was written and provided by Denise Weaver Ross.
The blog post review author’s
Denise Weaver Ross collection:
House of Cards: The Whole Deck (book of poetry and art)
House of Cards for Sickle Cell Warriors (Tarot Card Deck)
Letters to the Deceased & Other Missives: Poems
Find out more about Denise’s art and publications at her website:
Poet, Artist, Muralist Denise Weaver Ross
Photo provided by Denise Weaver Ross
About Denise, in her own words:
Biography/ Artist Statement
Denise Weaver Ross is an artist, poet, and muralist. She has designed four murals in the Albuquerque area, and her poems have been published in anthologies both nationally and internationally.
Denise graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with a Master of Fine Arts degree. She has exhibited in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally. A prolific artist, Denise is also a poet, with poems published in many anthologies as well as in five books of her own art and poetry.
As an artist, she explores her understanding of the world through images richly layered with mythological, natural, cultural and historical references.
For her, the magic happens when disparate images combine to make a new and unexpected image with layers rich with hidden meaning.
Denise is known for her large thematic series such as House of Cards, Legendary Creatures, 64 Hexagrams and her newest series, Postcards to America.
In the House of Cards series she reimagines a deck of cards in 56 large-scale works-on-paper in which spades become bones and fossils; diamonds become stars, heavenly bodies and constellations; clubs become trees both real and symbolic; and hearts explore her personal experiences in the matters of the heart using Tarot and Egyptian imagery.
Her series Legendary Creatures explores worldwide legends and myths from A to Z, and 64 Hexagrams combines symbolic and mythological imagery with the yin and yang lines of the I Ching, the 2,000-year-old Chinese divination system.
Denise’s new series Postcards to America explores events and systemic problems in each of the fifty states, in which the postcard dream of America is in direct conflict with its reality. In these images, she layers idealized images from vintage postcards with images taken from current and historical places and events.
Denise has lived and worked in Albuquerque since 1996 and shows regularly at Ghostwolf and Tortuga Galleries. Some of her achievements and honors are listed below:
2019–completed fourth mural at the Orpheum Community Hub building at 500 2nd Street in Albuquerque. This mural celebrates the history and cultural of the Barelas neighborhood.
2018–designated a Local Treasure by the Albuquerque Business Arts Association and led a team of artists including Roe LiBretto and Joel Davis in creating a 24×90-foot mural that wraps around the Tortuga Gallery in Albuquerque. The mural was part of Mural Fest 2018 and celebrates the flora and fauna of Albuquerque’s Bosque. She showed the I Ching Hexagram series in a one-person show at Tortuga Gallery
2017–commissioned to do the poster painting for ¡Globalquerque!, Albuquerque’s annual world music festival, where she also exhibited her String series based on musical instruments. Earlier in 2017 she completed her second mural entitled We the People that depicts dancers from many cultural traditions along a 40-foot wall on Tapia Road in the South Valley.
2016—won Best in Show in the Las Vegas International Juried Art Competition at Jana’s RedRoom Gallery with one of the paintings from her House of Cards series and showed her Legendary Creatures series at Tortuga Gallery.
2015—her House of Cards series of fifty-six 26×40-inch paintings was displayed in at Tortuga Gallery. Three pieces from the series where also displayed in Times Square as part of the international SeeMe competition. Also painted her first mural at The Source Forest in Albuquerque.
Learn more about Denise and her art and poetry at her website deniseweaverross.com
About the Blog Post Author
Mary Dezember, PhD, is a poet, an author of fiction and non-fiction, an educator, and a lover of visual, verbal and musical art.
She is seen here enjoying the beautiful House of Cards by Denise Weaver Ross.
Mary earned her PhD in Comparative Literature, specialization in Comparative Arts, from Indiana University in 2000, with PhD minors in Art History and Performance Studies.
Professor Emeritus of English, she taught Comparative Arts, Art History, Creative Writing and Literature at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology from August 2000 to May 2021.
Her publications include several non-fiction essays and articles and two books of poetry: Earth-Marked Like You (Sunstone Press) and Still Howling (CreateSpace Independent Publishing). Her novel, Wild Conviction, is in the works to be published by Inkshares.