Fanjoy-Labrenz Photograph Inspires Caywood Poem

Fanjoy-Labrenz Photograph Inspires Caywood Poem
Musings for February 26, 2009

For the third week in a row, this installment of “Musings” features poetry and artwork from the Aroma of Art fundraiser auction going on this month at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory.
Aroma of Art is a month long silent auction whose proceeds benefit three nonprofits, ALFA (AIDS Leadership Foothills-area Association), Humane Society of Catawba County, and Women's Resource Center. Local artists have donated works which are on display in Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and can be bid on there. Final bid winners will be announced at Aroma of Art’s Grand Finale, slated for February 28.
In conjunction with Aroma of Art, Poetry Hickory is sponsoring an Ekphrastic Poetry Event. Area writers have produced poems based on works in the Aroma of Art display. These poems have been judged by a panel of local poets, and selected poems have been framed and are on display next to the work of art they were inspired by. The selected poems will be read by their authors at the Aroma of Art Ekphrastic Poetry Event at Taste Full Beans on February 26 and then presented to the winning bidder at the Grand Finale.
The poem below was written by Bud Caywood and inspired by the photograph, “Tree of Life,” by Fanjoy-Labrenz. This particular photo has inspired more poems for the exhibit than any other single piece. Caywood is a very popular Hickory-area poet and artist, who has published 11 books. He has also created handmade greeting cards available in the Hickory Museum of Art.
Sally Fanjoy and James Labrenz are Hickory photographic artists whose work has been shown extensively throughout the Southeast, most recently at the Hickory Museum of Art, the Wilkes Art Gallery, and the Caldwell Arts Council. They were recipients of the United Arts Council Innovative Artists' Grant and the Regional Artists' Grant.
For more information on Aroma of Art, visit the website at http://aromaofart.blogspot.com/ or call Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse at 828-325-0108. For information on the Ekphrastic Poetry Event or Poetry Hickory, contact Scott Owens at asowens1@yahoo.com or 828-234-4266.

Tree of Life
(For the photograph “Tree of Life” by Sally Fanjoy & James Labrenz)

An ashen image
In a vapor waterscape,
Leaf-shade and mirrors

This is not the first reflection.
First black and white photograph or last ekphrastic poem.
Not the first craving to find something abstract in nature.
Not just an ashen image or the photographers’ whim.
It is curiosity in space and time missing.
It is liquid gone from existence.
It is a brain-spinning breach of a time-lapsed moment.
It is cinema, sun and sky spattering the lens.
This is not the sudden landscape becoming accidental.
This is not just one photographic dimension.
Not a mirror or twin sisters.
It is looking out into a dim curtain of mist,
Obscuring what might be there below the reflection.
It is light sliced away from reality.
It is an orbit of fluid under an eye.
It is patience and perfection in the groin of earth.
It is a face into the photograph.
With eyes squinting, pupils straining,
Searching to find birth in a vapor waterscape.
This is not a picture of a tree’s own image in water.
It is more than leaf-shade and mirrors.
It is glass reshaping the illusion of something not yet finished.
It is life found in the snap-shot of a tree.
It is a seed not yet fallen.
A root not yet sprouted.
It is more like a question growing.
It is an embryo.