The following is a draft statement Petra wrote for a proposal to include the work A little madness in the Spring (after Emily Dickinson) in a small group exhibition.
XXXVIII
A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene-
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own!
-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson wrote this poem, as was her custom, on a scrap of paper circa 1875. By then Miss Dickinson was no longer in the Spring of her mortal existence but late Autumn, entering the final decade of her life. The poem was first published posthumously 1914 in The Single Hound. This volume is a collection of poems Miss Dickinson had sent to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Susan Dickinson kept the poems close, reading and rereading the poems and the numerous letters from close friend until her own death in 1913. Thereafter, faced with the decision to either burn (the wishes of Miss Dickinson) or pass along the papers to the group of lovers and scholars who’d grown in the quarter century since her Aunt Emily’s passing, her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, chose the latter, for which I am personally grateful.
April 2017 as part of the exhibition ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson’ at The Morgan Library, New York City, I had the opportunity to personally view the scrap of paper upon which Miss Dickinson drafted this poem.* Using techniques and materials of reproduction/replication -digital photography, inkjet prints, mirrors- in combination with my seeds of choice -pigments fertilized with gum arabic and acrylic binder, applied to a soil of paper and panel, and watered with -well, water- I’ve cultivated my own little garden for contemplating the madness in the Spring; ‘this tremendous scene’ of regeneration -yet, each instance unique. A scene we might observe, attempt to reproduce or replicate, but never possess or truly originate.
-pn
*To view the original draft of this poem and hear it read please visit: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/emily-dickinson/12
A short bio to be included with the proposal co-written by Petra and Robyn:
Petra Nimm is a persona of the painter Robyn Thomas. Little is known biographically about the painter Petra Nimm other than she has preference for the fluidity of paint, speaking in images rather than words, is enamored by flowers and the poems of Emily Dickinson. When Petra Nimm is not painting she is reading.Robyn Thomas (b. 1970 Columbus, Ohio) received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Studio Art -Painting from Kent State University in 1991 and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Practice from Transart Institute in Partnership with Plymouth University [UK] in 2016. Based in Providence, Rhode Island since 2002, Ms. Thomas has exhibited her artwork in Germany, Japan and the United States. Currently she is a candidate in the practice-led PhD program of Transart Institute in Partnership with Plymouth University [UK]. Ms. Thomas is assisted in her research on play, personas and painting by the personas Petra Nimm and Franz I. Walsh, both painters, and the writer-persona Melusine Van der Weyden.