Poster Image

An elderly woman shops for eggplants at a farmers market

$20

Item#: 2003SYR13

Purchase Details

11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.

You also receive…

An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.

Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.

Poem Inspiration Location

Rich Purple Eggplant

poster information

Description

rich purple eggplant
vies for space in my basket
with summer's last greens

We live in Oswego, but we often come to Syracuse for my daughter's band rehearsals. She was rehearing one day, when my husband and I discovered the Regional Market. It was toward the end of summer, and the eggplants were phenomenal. We ended up with a basket of dark purple, light purple and white eggplant, summer's last greens, and a bunch of onions.

We went home and ended up with a really nice eggplant Parmesan salad. We were just amazed by the vegetables, and the freshness and beauty of them. It was like a feast for all the senses—different colors, textures, tastes and smells: garlic, onions, savory spices. It's a great resource for the whole area.

I have been recently working on a series of pieces from photographs taken while traveling around Sicily. Most of the photos are street or market scenes that I found interesting. I felt that this poem's illustration would allow me to explore that same situation at home rather than abroad.

Markets are great places to get a sense of culture. I'm interested in the aesthetics of people and how they interact with each other and their environment.

I find, in this setting, certain things that transcend political boundaries. The details change from town to town, but the big picture remains familiar. The moment I pieced together from photos taken here in Syracuse could have easily been from countless places around the world.