Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2013SYR01
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.
Canning Peaches, Corn
poster information
Description
Canning peaches, corn,
apples, kale — filling glass jars
with soil, rain, and work.
Syracuse is a rare city: farmland and its products are easily accessible from the urban center and even easier on Saturday mornings at the Farmer's Market. Having also lived in Detroit and Boston, I appreciated this access when I moved to Syracuse. Growing up in rural Maine, my family maintained a large garden, and we grew most of our own vegetables in the summer. My mom canned and preserved, and in Syracuse I started doing it myself, and rediscovered those skills.
I respond better to poetry that is (pardon the pun) rooted in strong images, and I think my own writing is stronger when it is image-based, so the image of canned produce felt like a natural way to discuss season—which is integral to haiku—and also the idea of work, and the endurance of work in the literal act of preservation.
More succinctly stated: the inspiration was already on my kitchen counter!
I chose this haiku because I liked the imagery of all of the jars. Then, my second impression was that I was really intrigued by the word “work” at the end. Filling it not with just soil and rain, but the labor that went into it; I think that was the most important thing, and I wanted that to come across in my illustration. I wanted to show how apple picking and canning things is part of the community, not just the finished product.
It was challenging to create a composition with three people doing different actions, and making them interact. Though time was short, the project helped me practice taking reference photos, and it helped me to improve on portrait painting. It was a good challenge in composition and in using a poem, then basing something off of that.