’97 Positions of the Heart’ – 2 more days!

Last Thursday, núna proudly presented the opening launch of Jaik Josephson’s volume of poetry, ‘97 Positions of the Heart’, in addition to recent launches of new books by Michael Benjamin Brown and Sylvia Matas.

These excellent works – both the books and the artwork – can still be viewed at ace art inc. until Thursday, May 24th.

97 Positions of the Heart
Ace Art
290 McDermot Ave.
Tues – Sat, 12-5pm
Exhibit up until Thursday, May 24th
Free Admission

97 Positions of the Heart is a lyrical travelogue through the courageous life of Canadian writer Elizabeth Smart, author of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945).  Poet Jaik Josephson mines both her biography and literary catalogue to escort the reader into her remarkable world. Each poem charts Smart’s persistent quest to resist the forces that sought to claim and silence her.  Text is paired with illustrations by Erin Josephson-Laidlaw to reveal a vast emotional range that meditates upon Elizabeth’s bewildering childhood, a tumultuous romantic pairing with English writer, George Barker, the experience of motherhood and her pursuit of a prosaic language that speaks a truth about life in the social margins.

Michael Benjamin Brown’s Winterhousesis an ‘unsequenced’ group of 60 pages of images and language. Symbols, ranging from the scientific to the mythological, the numinous to the beautiful, and the mysterious to the matter-of-fact weave throughout the work, while changing form on any given page. Metamorphosing interpretation occurs through individual’s random arrangements. Viewers might conjure narratives or simply a singular impression.

Sylvia Matas’s In Every Direction consists of images and text. There is no narrative – it is more of an incomplete collection of information that describes overlapping mental and physical environments. There are references to (among other things) sound and movement through time and space, in and out of intensity and in and out of focus.