Leopard Jasmine

From the safety of a comfortable chair, one can travel the world of Professor Leopard Jasmine, a character who can change his spots. In fact, David Stone has given his alter ego the opportunity to traverse anywhere David is willing to take us in his Word World. Leaving the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago AND his wife and children, Jasmine embarks on a journey to  ‘find himself”. As time and later works expose, Jasmine will continue to wander in poetic flow through David’s words.  Here he is  a traveller/composer in this, David’s first book length poem,  then he is a magic user who visits Atlantis in his play Magus Jasmine, and later  a temporary, but continuous tenant in later works. In Leopard Jasmine, Jasmine incantates sym-phonetic notes whilst traversing the stars, Olympus, the Sahara, Iowa and everything in between.  Each of his destinations are compressed in time and space to appear in solar orbit at all times in all places. Doomed as a mortal, doomed as the wandering dead, it is clear that even if he is lord of the sun, Jasmine is beset by his humanity. It plagues his symphonies and emotions,  complicates his relationships and douses his spirit in anger and sadness.  Even as he orbits the plane of Ra, delineating

the matrix of lords of light in which he dwells

hunting the mountains of Montana, music issues out of rabbits.

In the Caribbean Sea, living on fish and water and fruit,

a desert island, alone with an image of a woman

dressed in white, with dark hair down her back

kissed by a gentle warm wind with blue eyes

which dance upon the surface of the waves of the sun

Jasmine must die.

But, as a pseudo man, Jasmine, made of scented words, bitterness, fragmented memory shards and hopeless dreams, he will continue to walk the corridors of David’s imagination. 

Bridge Poems

Bridge Poems was one of the first books David sent me. I was unsure of his work – reading it was quite unlike anything I had tackled before. It wasn’t long before the words were a kaleidoscope of images drawn from so many sources, some better known than others, but all within the realms of my reading and living experiences. 

Correspondence middle 2019: David and Painting and The Bridge

I stopped painting because I am focused entirely on writing poetry. When I wrote Bridge Poems, I was inspired by the bridge in Baltimore near MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts). It was old and rusted at the time but has since been repainted in bright colors. I did a large oil painting of the bridge vaulting over a night city street scene which I used for the cover of the Bridge Poems book. I have not felt inspiration since that time to do another painting. (13 Nov 2019). I had a passion to paint since high school. Going into college, I wanted to study painting and philosophy but could not because at the University of Illinois I had to choose between the college of art or the college of LAS/Liberal Arts and Sciences and chose LAS with a major in philosophy and a minor in English. I was inspired by Hart Crane's poem The Bridge, about the Brooklyn Bridge, although the perspective on technology is opposite - in the early 20th century: he marvelled at the creation of the bridge and my perspective on the bridge in Baltimore was oriented towards the landscape of urban decay.

(From Amazon)

·       Paperback: 82 pages

·       Publisher: Six Gallery Press (April 11, 2007)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 097829615X

·       ISBN-13: 978-0978296155

·       Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.2 x 8 inches

Evidence for Trees

Evidence for Trees

Edition of 4 handmade Artists’ Books. Spine: The Authentic Massacre of the Innocent Image, painting # 115. Accordion bound, text, paint, photographs, digital prints, photographs by Casey Aub. This was a book filled with strange words, written at a strange time in my life. 

Do you ever feel like you’re being coloured in said Casey?

What do you mean?

Like when you turn the pages of books people are sometimes red, or yellow, or blue, it’s a scratchy feeling.

---No said I, but some days when I wake up I feel so small I can walk under a coffee table and other days I feel so tall I cant get through the door.

Oh.

FACEBOOK

Face Book

Unique Book. 2014.  A book of ridiculousness compulsions. Let me give you an idea – about three weeks prior to the digital art festival celebrating ‘20 years of democracy’, I decided to paint the entire department for the staff exhibition. That’s  not five or ten portrait exercise, that’s about 80 portraits, all original paintings. The book is called Face Book - obviously!  The portraits are 25cm x 25cm in accordion format. If that was ALL I had to do, I would not be thinking I was vaguely mad – there are 80 of them! The bottom corner is Lindt - a rescue kitten who is all claws and ears at the moment. AND I understand why 'curiosity killed the cat'...

Night Crossing. Cheryl Penn.

Unique Altered Book. Night Crossing was appropriated  because of its title.  I have taken ‘night crossing’ to mean that moment of transition when the night crosser,   a symbolic person,  transforms and  re-contextualizes  the fragments and images of one’s day into the dream image sequences of  the night. Again, most of the text is obliterated with  the surreal elements remaining; those textual fragments which allude to dreams.  For example;  …there were shadows at the front door, beyond the glass…;  …the world could blink out in a second; … a cluster of hedgehogs erupted all around…  These textual fragments, taken out of context become the equivalent of  a visual fragment  in the altered book.   Inserted into the book are personal dreams, pinned onto the pages.  The choice of pinning rather than sticking was to create the awareness of fragmentation and things not being a part of each other; disparate elements such as the book, the textual fragments, the drawings, the collages, the dreams which are placed together but which remain disjointed. 

MA BookObject - Edition Footura black - Karl-Friedrich Hacker

I have not heard from Karl in quite a while, but suddenly again, he appears in the post with a surprise - doing something I have never got around to, but had always intended! What does one do with all the beautiful envelopes, with all the trouble people have gone to when sending zine material? A hand stitched, decorated book of envelopes from all around the world. I have to check if El Mao Tao is still going - that was an amazing assembly book - does anyone know? Such editions were the halcyon days of Mail Art for me.  I think I will return an envelope book - at least I will FINALLY get around to making one.  The envelopes are quite revealing I think - perhaps more than the senders realize. And the stamps - tiny works in multiplication by artists of another sort. 

Babel Collaborations

There have been about 17 participants in this collaboration so far, with just 3 sets outstanding, but mostly on their way.  They have been collated into three pocket books for the New Alexandrian Library and one set has gone to Japan for exhibition in December.  Each participant received 5 other altered copies of Babel.

Here are some of the USA collaborations received:

                                                    Cheryl Penn/John Bennett (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Allan Bealy (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Rosaire Appel (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Mark Sonnenfeld (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Alicia Starr (USA)

Babel Edition 9

Original (Cheryl Penn)

# 1 Cheryl Penn (South Africa) and David Stone. Edition of 20.

I have not done a large collaboration for quite a quite a while, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how it pans out.  The idea is that I send participants 2 copies of a chapbook titled Babel, one to keep and one to alter.  The original altered copy is sent back to me and I make an edition of 7.  I keep one, two get sent back to the artist, one bound, one unbound for them to copy and reproduce if they wish.  They also receive 5 other chapbooks from other artists who have followed this same process. The first one I have tackled is with the poet David Stone (USA). David exchanged words via email. As a wordsmith David is immediately responsive to titles and images and his poetry is its usual enigmatic, apparently disconnected phrases and words which, once read somehow make total sense. They also evoke strong mental imagery. 

“bracketed barriers enclosed the summation of

orders

toes tagged

silence lost” 

As I had a bit of time on my hands, the copies I made have numerous hand painted elements, but I‘m not sure if this practice will remain, although 7 copies is quite manageable. There are an extra few copies for him and I to both distribute. I will be using this small volume as an enticement - (I hope!) for others to join in the collaboration. 

Original chapbook which was altered