AIABaltimore Gallery Exhibit Committee: November 2007

First Thursday Gallery Opening, November 2007

Solitary Woman in a Glass House: Visual Translations of Emily Dickinson Poems

Works by Don Cook

AIABaltimore Gallery in collaboration with Jordan Faye Contemporary
Through November 29, 2007

Opening Reception, Thursday, November 1, 5 – 7 p.m.
AIABaltimore Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 – 4:30 p.m.

The images and maquettes of "Solitary Woman in a Glass House," Don Cook’s visual translation project based on Emily Dickinson’s poetry, offer a strikingly unexpected, but eerily right corollary to their poetic sources. Like the poems, they are knowingly ambiguous – spare, yet intimate spaces offering a view that looks both outward and inward; a solid, physical presence infused with a transitory, disquieting “certain slant of light.” And likewise, when Cook outlines the working concept of his translation process, it is economical and lucid. “reaking each line of a poem into syllables and then rendering each syllable as a square results in a kind of footprint; essentially, a grided floor-plan of the poem. The internal and end rhymes, refrain sequences, and strong alliterative patterns are then translated as upright elements, such as post and lintel features, load bearing walls, etc. Despite their brevity and economy, Dickinson’s poetry has a complex, balanced internal structure; from an architectural standpoint, many of Dickinson’s poems are able to carry a roof.”

But the Baltimore-based artist also readily admits that these outcomes were actually the result of a series of fortuitous accidents and unlikely conjunctions that occurred over quite a number of years. “There was no programmatic roadmap; no ‘Eureka’ moment. The germ of this project began nearly a decade ago when I was pressed into helping someone with a homework assignment. It was resurrected several years later in some crits and extended conversations when I first moved to Baltimore, during my Creative Alliance residency. Then it lay dormant once again until a chance encounter in the spring of this year led Baltimore’s Urbanite magazine to express an interest in featuring one of the project sketches on their poetry page. It was a combination of the recent Urbanite opportunity, the enthusiasm of my dealer, Jordan Faye Block, who’s curating the AIABaltimore Gallery exhibit, and AIABaltimore’s own commitment to the exhibition that really helped to cohere and advance this project.”

Despite the artist’s long-standing interest in architecture and architectural drawing, his initial sketches for the Dickinson project resulted in more questions than answers. ȁIt took me a long time to accept what my own drawings were telling me – that the work of a 19th Century poet could be recast into a High Modern glass box.” And while the resulting structures bear more than a passing resemblance to the Modernist pavilion or loggia, such as Miës’ German Pavilion, his Farnsworth House, or Johnson’s Glass House, Cook specifically cites Richard Neutra as the guiding spirit for the architectural portion of this project.

“Neutra was my intuitive first choice, and recently I discovered through Sylvia Lavin’s study, Form Follows Libido, that Neutra was steeped not only in the emerging Modernist culture of LA, but also in psychoanalysis. He wanted the cool, detached California Modern space to reaffirm its connection to the natural environment, and become a containment vessel for psychic presence, so his works can be read as an uneasy dialectic of cool rational form and psychic heat, nature and shelter, exposure and intimacy – just like Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson always seems to be grasping for some tangible outcome that is impossibly both otherworldly and temporal – so if she suddenly, inexplicably found herself in a 40’s era glass house in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the lights of LA, she might actually be more tantalized than shocked.”

Cook is delighted by this project’s eccentricities, and the often wayward, unpredictable path by which it has unfolded. ȁIt’s in keeping with my work in general, which is often out of bounds of today’s art strategies of career development scenarios, or scholarly conceptual programs. The project has a life of its own – which at least makes it distant kin to the eccentric spirit of Dickinson and her poetry.”