Before I can get to the images to tell the next steps in the process of making I need to tell the story behind the steps.
This painting, a collaboration between myself, Franzi, Petra, and Melusine, grew out of one twelfth of the Twelve Poems painting. Since the last post of its progress on November 14th the painting undertook a major shift reflected in its title change from the place-holder 'Eight by Ten by Twelve by Four' to 'Elegy'.
An elegy is a poem, serious reflection, or lament for the dead. An elegy is melancholic. This elegy is for the persona and collaborator in this painting, Melusine van der Weyden.
As a non-painter persona Melusine had not been an active collaborator in the making process like Franzi and Petra have been and continue to be. She was the writer, the protagonist of the narrative. As such her role was to write the subtext from which the text, the work, is derived.
This summer her existence as a writer in digital format only expanded into a more physical realm with her 'handwriting' in Sütterlin font. The words she wrote out with a fountain pen in this early 20th century German font were the words she had written in emails, in poems, and found from other writers. She began to lend her hand writing to the paintings too. First, in sketches and informal works on paper. In Twelve Poems a series of ten poems she wrote in her early days with me were printed in the font and nested into the cradle of the birch wood panels. By the time this painting, still called Eight by Ten by Twelve by Four, was in the making Petra and Franzi suggested that part of the text from Melusine's poem found on the small painting that gave birth to this larger one be incorporated into these panels. Working together with Franzi and Petra Melusine transferred words from the poem via oil crayon onto the surface. That is where the last posting ended on November 14.
While the paint was drying, Concertinaed was unfolding and life was unraveling. December 17 Melusine unexpectedly died. Franzi and Petra decided this painting would become Elegy for Melusine. The surface we four had worked on together would be glazed in blacks and whites. Glazed so the colors peek through because nothing is ever 'black and white'. The words of Melusine are submerged, embedded beneath a layer of black and white into the surface, but remain visible, sometimes dark and scary and other times colorful, light and a bit jumbled.
The interior cradle of the panels had remained 'un-worked' except for the splintering caused by the holes Franzi had drilled through to emphasize the 'object' quality of the paintings a la Lucio Fonatana's I Buchi. Upon hearing of Melusine's death Petra had selected a fragment of a poem from Emily Dickinson in memory of her fellow persona and the possibilities opened to us all by her death. Together Franzi and Petra decided this poem should serve as the 'narrative' line running through the cradle of the panels and they would collaborate on the painting, leaving my hand out of it.
A couple of twists in the text of the interior occur in the font. Petra has a fondness for 'translating' Dickinson poems into Nymans font to share with others. There is something about seeing and reading Dickinson's words as leaves which speaks to Petra's understanding of the natural language of the poems, where words like leaves have a life span of four seasons: the buds forming in winter, forming fragrant blossoms and sprouting into tender leaves in spring, growing green and strong throughout the summer only to grow colorful before drying up and withering to fall from the trees in Autumn to the ground where they compost into the soil to feed the growth of the next generation. However, Franzi and Petra agreed that Nymans was not Melusine's font and the words should be written in her script -Sütterlin.
The second twist is the language of this font is German, not English. The poem is in English, and because the languages share an alphabet, it is possible to write the English words in the German font. A person able to read Sütterlin -and these are fewer and fewer as it has not been 'taught' as a form of handwriting since 1941 in Germany, and only a few learn to read it, mainly to be able to read letters and texts from the period it was used [1911-1941, a very short time, really only a generation ever learned to write it]. BUT if a person learned to read this font they learned to read it in German. Even if the reader also can read English seeing the words, the combination of letters from another language, depicted in the font of another can be confusing, yet it does not make it impossible for the reader to read what is there. Greater effort is required, looking and making the leap from the expectation 'Sütterlin = German' to the actuality 'in this text Sütterlin = English'.
Admittedly, this is a leap some will not be able to make, and that is okay. Just as there are a limited number of people able to read this font in German, there will be even fewer who also can read English, and still fewer who can make the jump from the expectation to the actual. What matters is not the ability to decipher the text, but to see it and to understand that it could be deciphered if and only if certain conditions are met. It is up to the reader of the text to have the desire to make an effort to acquire the skills necessary to read it. It is up to the writer (artist) to present the text, and nothing more.
So, here in Elegy Franzi and Petra present this text for Melusine.