Independent project: Whitman Refigured Kenna Titus I chose to study the work of Walt Whitman for two reasons- firstly because he is a personal hero and inspiration in my life, and secondly due to the incredible legacy of his poetry in american literary society. Referred to as the father of free verse, a poet of democracy, and one of the most important american poets, Whitman words seem to be just as relevant today as they were in the 19th century. Upon first reading Whitman I was completely enamoured, and fell particularly in love with his poem Song of Myself. I soon found a copy that I could take notes in and took it with me everywhere for over a year. I shared so many moments and made so many connection through this text, it started to feel like a part of me. During all kinds of conversations I would pull the small tattered copy out of my bag to share a few choice lines, to share the beauty of these prose and the connectedness of life that they displays. To my grandma I once read the passage: All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. (6) Unflinchingly she replied by asking that I read Whitman to her when she is dying.
this piece: To a friend who was struggling with finding herself and her worth I shared Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from. The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer, this head more than churches, bibles, and creeds. (24) It so inspired her that she incorporated the lines into her next painting. The words of a Song of Myself have touched so many lives around me that going into this quarter I felt tremendously inspired to find a way to share them in a more relatable way. The poem is long and many people I know are unlikely to read things not assigned to them, but I figured if I could find a way to make even a few stanzas more accessible, to make them solid, they could reach more minds. This is what led to my interest in creating my independent project. I decided to use the passage towards the beginning of Song of Myself which talks about leaves of grass, both because it s familiar and because I ve been thinking alot about the boundaries of nature, what exactly we consider unnatural. I wanted to use a range of materials (both natural and un) to make leaves of grass, and then place the words of the poem on these shapes. I used clay to start because it was a medium I was comfortable with. I shaped
cartoonishly thick blades of grass and once they were fired painted them green and glazed them. I then moved on to 3D printing and design to make a similar shape in PLA. Finally, I made one blade from a recycled book, paper mâchéing the pages over aluminum foil to create the curved shape. Although some of these pieces may seem unnatural I was reminded through this process of the interconnectedness of all things, a topic on which Whitman often writes. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots, and peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, the earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. (7) The PLA came originally from corn, and it s biodegradable so eventually these pieces will return to the earth. The paper which I used once belonged to a book that sat in someones home and before that it came from a factory but before all that it was part of some expansive forest, and, as Whitman reminds us, someday it will be again.
In this vein I decided to plant my pieces in a pot filled with dirt from the forest near my dorm mixed with the leftover pages from my paper mâchéing. I did this in order to combine the natural with the processed and to juxtapose what we consider organic with what we deem artificial. To see PLA planted in a bed of dirt was for me a perfect example of what we have been calling retro-tech, the combination of the new with the old, but it was also a reminder of the timelessness and sameness of all these things. As the buddhist philosopher Dogen Zenji wrote: the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.
The final step in this project was to apply the words to the pieces I had made. I used the font type Rosarivo because it was originally designed for letterpress printing and therefor had the detail I craved. Arranging the lines was somewhat difficult, as I didn't want to loss the easy flow of the verse, but I eventually found a way to give each blade of grass a few words-- a musing on what it might symbolize. Ultimately this project gave me practice in trying to make the theoretical tactile, and in finding ways to relay information in new formats so that it might be better received. It also gave me a platform to explore different materials and their place in the natural world. I look forward to continuing my work with literature and finding new ways to transform and refigure it.
https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/rosarivo