Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 14, Special Edition: Nature

Online Art Exhibition

March 25, 2022

Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 14, Special Edition: Nature

In March 2020 when we went on lockdown due to the pandemic, the Shoebox Arts team created “Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance” as a way to stay connected and to check in with and support each other. We are just finishing up Round 14 and have enjoyed the process, experiences and friendships that we have made. The project draws on the tradition of Jazz and Exquisite Corpse as a way for the artists to ping pong creatively off of each other.

Please join us for the opening reception of the online exhibition via zoom Sunday March 27, 11am-1pm pst.

Cover photo by Sue Jenkins

Call and Response: Nature Artist Talk March 27, 2022

Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja and Sandy Huse

Aidan Mirowsky

Anda Marcu and Dellis Frank

Andi colombo and April Bermudez

Ann Storc and Ilke Iter

Anne M Bray and Kathryn Pitt

Ashley Hester and Christine Hippeli

Aurora Bewicke and Faina Kumpan

Austin Lubetkin and Lina Kogan

Betty Rosen and Robyn Alatorre

Corinne Lightweaver and Theresa Knopf

Cynthia Cole and Sina Evans

Debra Bianculli and Kess Kin

Elisabeth Kelvin and Michal Greenboim

Eva Marie Amiya and Julie Williams

Genie Davis and Maddie Maser

1 Genie Davis

All the selves you were are already past

There is something about tomorrow,
the invisible link
between hold-music
and war,

the inevitability of what was,
the return of what will be.
And if you find yourself lost,
at sea, on your knees

cajoling, capitulating, praying,
protesting, binging festival movies,
online, unlinked, tethered,
then free—

so it seems, those slivers of you
slide together in new ways.
There are more funerals,
“Celebrations of life,”

the backwards slip of time so fast.
And yet the future gleams.
Through a power outage
in a dark desert motel,

the night around you like
a blanket, the fire
blazing up against paler stars,
the light of which is just

distant but fiercer than any
flame. You ask my name.
I have changed that too,
in a heart adrift in clouds of snow.

White crowns on the cactus,
ruts dissolving down an empty road.
It is time to end resistance,
it’s time to go home.

3 Genie Davis

I am a Sky

I am a Sky full of stars,
Jupiter and Mars,
translucent shell.
I am mother of pearl,

once a girl,
creature of loss,
gathering moss,
in a forest of tears and rain.

I am a moon,
yellow in June,
liquid as light,
shimmering bright.

I am the cloud,
doubtful but proud,
shivering grey on the wind.
I am my skin,

animal sheath,
howling the heath,
victim of peace,
waiting to break.

I am the wind beginning
to ache,
spring on the flower,
the future – my power

But I may not see.
Blind as the air,
surfeit with care,
ever veiled but in view.

I am a sky,
I am you.

5 Genie Davis

Hear Me Now (Ghost Sounds Singing)

She’s still listening to the sounds of rivers,
the liquid infinitesimal fluttering
ff water wings and reeds.
If memory is

translucent, transcendent,
then so are these words (if you say them/see them).
We listen within this world together,
a song you cannot see.

Dragon flies dart blue emeralds across the boardwalk,
the hush of flight, sky path, the connection –
a train passes, the image flickers
restart the movie, draw the shades.

I waver in the sunlight,
half-forgotten on a shiny highway,
whose onward pull allures even the most sedentary of
creatures, flying tires, beating wings, and beating heart.

Suspended in air, the green sunlight
filtered through photosynthetic sunglass leaves,
the illusion is complete,
of sanctuary.

Until we elevate the truth
beyond reason, as if nature
itself were the words, the poetry, a feeling we are showing
through light, through color, through sound

an emotion that indicates
we capture what envelops us with
the music of wings.
That dragonfly again,

the barest fluttering of the heart,
the faintest ripple of memory
the scratching of shadows –
you may remember me.

In a fragment of song,
in a flower or a stone,
sparkling with the morning light,
still quiet and unknown.

7 Genie Davis

Disconnected fragments of happiness

Yellow roses,
my mother’s Lily of the Valley
and African violet,
morning sunlight

on the breaking waves.
Kites swimming through the sky,
gulls, confused by the color,
heading above the strange tethered

birds and
dancing through the citrus sunset.
like stars, lights sprinkle
reflections on the digestif of bitter herbs.

We are a silver thing,
moon washed chill,
the moth at the porch light –
that dramatic flickering of wings.

Watching movies in the daytime,
blinking out to see the late, lush sun.
I remember not the story,
but what the flowers now have done.

First daffodils of springtime,
vivid streak of pre-dawn red,
you were the golden leaves of autumn,
so quickly have you fled.

9 Genie Davis

Permanence

There was a sea, a tree, a sky.
You could see the moon when it
began to rise.
I was a cloud,

a song, a pearl,
once upon a time,
a little girl.
There is the history

of memory
that you do not forget.
I remember, yet –
the name of that song escapes me.

Like a wisp of smoke,
illusions of hope,
remnants of change,
back and forth again,

but there is this.
Solid in the force of pain,
soaking through like rain,
just down this path –

there was a tree, a sea, a sky.
The moon was rising,
a gull cried.
You were you –

but still, I tried.
And the wind came, and
time blew it by.
You were you and I was mine.

11 Genie Davis

Blur

Down a roadway into night,
driving toward celestial light,
branching out and reaching in,
gold the color of my skin.

Where I am,
and where I’ve been,
micro-fiction loss and win,
moving through and on I go,

someday I’ll get to Mexico.
Where in my heart, the band
still plays,
I dine on lobster from the bay,

the ocean rocks the simple boat,
my tide will ebb,
my ashes float.
We want our dreams,

we live our hope,
and thread between them
our rescue ropes.
You hold on tight,

you will let go,
but down the road,
the wheels still roll.
Map the route,

turn left, turn right,
there’s second acts and
second sight.
And when the final

map you make,
you’ll find the notion
hard to shake –
I’ve been here once

or twice before,
the ride went fast
it sailed on past,
you saw it as one

gorgeous blur.

13 Genie Davis

Flight Patterns

I don’t know if you know,
the many different roads, paths, turns
life has taken.
At times, direction is chosen

in haste –
the urge to move on,
to pair,
to procreate…

or to express frustration,
impatience, love,
wait – let me speak my piece.
Pieces of me

slough off like shiny fish scales
or lizard skin.
We are a product of our journeys,
where we go or should’ve been.

Sometimes, destination is found
in careful planning, intricate
soul mapping, enforced isolation,
hourly prostration

and the need to make amends.
Some we meet through the days
were always destined to
part ways, others return

only to reach the inevitable dead end.
Before I find the point of
no return, I will wander among
the orange clivia in spring,

no chosen direction,
no planned resurrection –
but perhaps all roads
confer wings.

Jamia Weir and Caitlin Miller

Jeremy Hight and Nino Khundadze

Joas Nebe and Beatrice (Bea) Antonie Matino

Jody Zellen and Morgan Grimes

June Stoddard and Ruth Ellen Hoag

K Muldoon and Azucena Trejo-Williams

Kamelyta and Amanda L Andrei

6 Amanda L Andrei

WHO IS THE REAL IBONG ADARNA? (short scene)

Two birds: BUGHAW, deep green and blue-black, and PULA, scarlet and bright rose. Feathers up, completely poised and alert, in an apparent staring contest.

BUGHAW AND PULA
Ready.

They stare.

BUGHAW
Kapow!

PULA
Pzzzz!

BUGHAW
NNNNNN!

PULA
WOOOOSH!

They stare. Their feathers ruffle.

BUGHAW
You’re not the real ibong Adarna.

PULA
Neither are you.

BUGHAW
But I could be.

PULA
So could I.

They circle each other.