"Mother Memory" (Art Exhibit Series, 6/10)
Toti O’Brien
The following is part of the Mother Memory art exhibit series, a pairing of literature with art curated by the exhibitor, Toti O’Brien. Oyster River Pages is pleased to present this series in weekly installments.
Kathabela Wilson’s poem intersects memories of her mother with the idea of other origins, geographically removed but also (because they are the sources of the Nile, a place charged with history, legends, myths) shifting back in time, primeval and remote. Hence, the mother becomes the matrix—the beginning, the cause, the model—though she is simultaneously evoked in her tangible, concrete, delicate humanity. Braiding the very vast with the intimate is a distinctive feature—almost a trademark—of Wilson’s poetry. Also typical is the theme of writing/script/scripture, subtly yet decisively wedged among depictions of nature, evocations of feelings, and bodily sensations. Here, the name of the mother draws itself on water—a calligraphy that, in turns, de-ciphers the name of the daughter. The fluid element permeating the verse creates a cyclic, tidal feeling of ebbs and flows. All things change, but all things also return—meaning that all is connected, no matter how far-reaching the vision, how scattered in space and in time. The image of the mother is both focused and dissolved into her favorite color, blue (to quote Italian poet Francesco Guccini, the color of distance, color di lontananza).
Source of the Nile
by Kathabela Wilson
Here at the source is my mother
I wish my mother could last forever.
my mother is the Nile her birthplace
she is its lily multi-flora strong stemmed
she is the power of the water
exoticism of her past
hopefulness of her future
she is always blue
her closet bulges with blue blouses
blue dresses her signature
she is quiet as the Nile
before anything happens
deeply expectant like the reed
ready to be paper
she has written her name on the water
I am the first ripple
Abela of the Nile
back to the silent source her blue becomes
white clouds shaped like a woman
in blue sky deeper than the Nile
I wish my mother could last forever
Marina Moevs | Fog VI | oil on canvas | 50” x 32” | 2009
A (blinding, she defines it) light obliterates Moevs’ landscapes, pushing them toward the margins of the canvas until they disappear. The dissolving process took a number of years, as we can observe by studying each stage of Moevs’ work. The meticulous paintings of the initial phase were already infused with silence—with an apparent calm, slightly unnerving because of the sheer absence of people and animals. Surreal, melancholy, only the environment was left—the natural and the manmade, shaped by the human hand and yet empty, uninhabited. Progressively, the scenery has begun to vanish as well—the woods, road, lakeshore house, the ocean bay that on previous canvases were detailed and distinct return, still familiar but fragmented, maimed. Though it is forced towards the edges, the view remains perfectly focused, and the sharpness of the residue creates a strange, vertiginous contrast with the bright middle void. What we experience isn’t the common fading of vision due to distance, or at nightfall. Something else is at play that we don’t understand, but it makes us slightly uncomfortable, half in awe, half in fear. This invasive radiance starts from the center. As the artist says, “it does not light the landscape from outside, but from inside.” Slowly, it burns away shapes and contours, claiming every inch for itself. It is, Moevs explains, the light filling and unifying everything. It’s “the matrix—traditionally described as light, or ancestral waters—from which the world emerges (we included) and to which all returns. The matrix and the world (we included) are the same.” Still, it’s hard for me not to read the inexorable central blur also as the destiny of our planet—rather, as the fate of our relationship with Earth... such a frail, endangered bargain. Even less can I ignore echoes of death pure and simple, as it manifests itself, maybe, to those only who can bear its shine.
Kathabela Wilson is fortunate to travel internationally with her husband Rick Wilson, a mathematician and musician. When attending international mathematics conferences, she witnesses the spontaneous camaraderie of all cultures in the presence of common aims. Friendships are bridges that connect us all over the world, and this concept echoes Wilson’s mother’s international upbringing, as well as her lifelong ideas and hopes. Kathabela carries those hopes in a personal way, in her poetry and art, and in building communities based on poetic and emotional bonds that span the globe. Her recently published Figures of Humor and Strange Beauty (Glass Lyre Press, 201), documents a personal odyssey that transcends time and space to find universal wisdom and insight. https://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/about-the-society/tsa-officers/kathabela-wilson
Born in Boston and raised in New Jersey, Marina Moevs spent several years in Rome, Paris, and New York City, before settling in Los Angeles where she currently lives. She studied painting in Paris and New York, and received her MFA from Brooklyn College. Moevs’ paintings are a sustained meditation on the causes of climate change, where the answers are sought not so much in our ability to pollute, but rather in our understanding of who we are and how those notions shape our relationship to the planet. The sciences, physics, and biology in particular, have been influential in the development of Moevs’ ideas, as have philosophy, anthropology, non-dualism, and mysticism. Her artwork has been extensively exhibited in galleries and museums such as Koplin Del Rio, Peter Blake Gallery, and Louis Stern Fine Arts, the Long Beach Museum of Art, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Autry Museum of the American West, Oakland Museum, Nevada Museum, Carnegie Art Museum, and the Riverside Art Museum, as well as being reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and many other journals. She has lectured in academic and gallery settings and she has participated in numerous panel discussions. She has taught painting and drawing for many years at Loyola Marymount University, the University of Southern California, and California State University, Fullerton. https://marinamoevs.com/
