INSIDF DOUGLAS COLLEGE

Wai a

/ FEBRUARY 19, 1991

 

Literary Still Lifes

For the past four years, the director of our art gallery
has been supplementing the literary learning environ-
ment in our building with a series of unusual visual
displays. Using freestanding showcases of various
sizes and shapes, and in one instance an entire section
of brick wall from floor to ceiling, he combines artifacts
relevant to various literary excerpts by juxtaposing the
objects with texts printed in large type on pieces of
white foam-core board.

Each display features a specific author or a period or
movement in literature. They have ranged in composi-
tion from the brick wall faced with barn siding to
which were attached farm implements and farm
administration photographs of rural scenes from the
1930’s interspersed with selections from Steinbeck’s
Grapes of Wrath, to a single-pedestal, hexagonal show-
case containing an old Mason jar resting on a swatch of
red satin sprinkled with a few brown leaves, and an
enlarged reprint of Wallace Stevens’ poem “Anecdote
of the Jar.” One of the most striking of these literary
still lifes comprised an array of technical hardware—
springs, coils of wire, large bolts, a polished camshaft—
strewn over a stark landscape with excerpts from the
science fiction of Stanislaw Lem on white foam-core
placards suspended in a staggered pattern from the
ceiling of the lighted, cylindrical case.

An unexpectedly controversial display was a “Ken
and Barbie” tableau that was intended to publicize a
course on women in literature. Surrounded by a sea of
tiny doll hands thrusting up from a bed of white sand,
a bikinied “Barbie” rode ona surf raft towed by “Ken,”
with a golden chain, harness-fashion, around his neck.
In the center was a piece of mirror glass, partially
buried, in which the viewer could catch his own
reflection as he read a copy of Sylvia Plath’s poem
“Mirror.”

A recent effort, timed to coincide with “Earth
Week,” consisted of fossilized trilobites, sharks’ teeth,
and Eocene fish on a raked surface surrounded by
copies in large type of James Dickey’s “Last Wolver-
ine,” O.W. Holmes’ “Chambered Nautilus,” Robinson
Jeffers’ “Birds and Fishes,” and Robert Lowell’s “The
Mouth of the Hudson.”

In addition to transforming the hallways and lobbies

Cite ee te allie AAI ll SSR RA RR SS SN RPE ST TUS SS

of our building into some of the most visually interest-
ing venues on campus, these displays have had a
profound impact on students and visitors who regu-
larly stop to peruse them. In many instances, they
provide viewers with their first contact with a poet, or
novelist, or a literary movement. In others, they sup-
plement what was or is being studied in classes, pro-
voking fresh insights by bringing featured works to life
with new perspectives. It is also worth noting that the
fine arts and literature faculties in Essex have been
drawn into a greater collegiality, enriching the curric-
ula in both areas.

These “payoffs” are difficult to measure, but they
are nonetheless real and should make the technique
worth a try. Besides, it offers a welcome alternative to
dreary old bulletin boards!

W. P. Ellis, Chairman, Division of Humanities & Arts
For further information, contact the author at Essex

Community College, 7201 Rossville Boulevard, Balti-
more, MD 21237.

 

Suanne D. Roueche, Editor

November 16, 1990, Vol. XIl, No. 28

©The University of Texas at Austin, 1990
Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER
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