Melanie Morgana (the opening for Montréal artist Melanie Authier's exhibition, 'Contrarieties & Counterpoints')

Melanie Morgana

For the opening of Montréal artist Melanie Authier’s exhibition, “Contrarieties & Counterpoints” (July 16, 2016)

The Artist works her sacred magic

inside crystal caves.

Wands of flat brushes wave

ink of elderberry and linden;

angelica and jasmine upon

her transparent sheet.

Inks twist and fold,

dancing beneath the Artist’s spinning

light, up and over each

other across and through

the page. The cool colours

and patterned dancers

recede into the steps as

their warm, solid partners

spiral forward.

The movement leaps and

jumps around the altar as the

colours search for their counter

points and partners across the

cave’s centre.

Only White is the Artist’s

Résistance: the antagonist

to all her colours. White

blurs the horizon, coming

forward even when all

energies strive to keep it

back:

The only dissident in a room of

unified magical ground seekers.

Change (At the occasion of artist Becky Fixter’s exhibition, “Impermanence” (July 16, 2016))

Change

At the occasion of artist Becky Fixter’s exhibition, “Impermanence” (July 16, 2016)

1. Shift the colours on your page;

and softly coax your reds and purples,

that have concealed themselves

for years beneath

the permanent seams of this life.

Touch them. Glow them. Let their souls

 emerge, and alter your course.

2. Click the innate lights within,

those ancient synapses of the girl

you once were, and still can be.

Flick on that insight in your world,

firing up the lost electricity.

3. Drift to the forgiving music of

the earth, the oregano greens

springing to reach the hanging

cloudy whites in your air of un

certainty.

4. Freefall through puffs of colour:

down through smoke rings of rose,

lilac, snowdrop and pussy willow

grey rising from the primal pipe of

Persephone.

5. Even after years of dark hibernation,

it only takes the flux of alert female

foresight to snap those wandering

fraying fragments of the self into

the authentic route of your path.

(Chatham Artist Becky Fixter)

Change (At the occasion of artist Becky Fixter’s exhibition, “Impermanence” (July 16, 2016))

Change

At the occasion of artist Becky Fixter’s exhibition, “Impermanence” (July 16, 2016)

1. Shift the colours on your page;

and softly coax your reds and purples,

that have concealed themselves

for years beneath

the permanent seams of this life.

Touch them. Glow them. Let their souls

 emerge, and alter your course.

2. Click the innate lights within,

those ancient synapses of the girl

you once were, and still can be.

Flick on that insight in your world,

firing up the lost electricity.

3. Drift to the forgiving music of

the earth, the oregano greens

springing to reach the hanging

cloudy whites in your air of un

certainty.

4. Freefall through puffs of colour:

down through smoke rings of rose,

lilac, snowdrop and pussy willow

grey rising from the primal pipe of

Persephone.

5. Even after years of dark hibernation,

it only takes the flux of alert female

foresight to snap those wandering

fraying fragments of the self into

the authentic route of your path.

(Chatham Artist Becky Fixter)

Tree Lung

Tree Lung

On the occasion of student artist Rachel Bultje’s installation, “Breath of Life” at Chatham Kent Secondary School (June 14, 2016)

I am what’s left of the Orange Osage and Ash,

their remains lie with me now,

post execution of their roots so

that passers-by won’t slip on a

falling fruit.

I am a museum exhibit of the extinct

Protectors of our health. Each

carefully manufactured leaf, once

healed 2,000 lungs

diseased with asthma, viruses,

exposure to the worst sort of

world.

These limbs used to sway free,

filtering the oily toxins from

their families below, releasing

the diamond-clear air of life.

Now they are bound in this cage

crinoline, as an example:

‘What not to do’

‘What has been done’.

Glass Birth at the Glass Academy

Glass Birth

Inside the oven’s core

awaits molten sand and

cullet, broken shards that

have long since lost their

lives and returned to an ash of

soda and lime, gametes ready

for mitosis

at 2,200°.

Jason, like Gepetto before him,

gently gathers a gob of swirling

zygote, like honey on the end of

a wand, turning to keep it latched.

He dips it into a petit bundt

mould, giving it edges, a core

of ridges to form a heart

and life.

Colours are added from the sulphides

and oxides of the Earth: blue

from the cobalt, sun yellow from

the cadmium, and a red of

Mesopotania’s ancient gold

chloride.

Jason’s gaffer pinches the ends,

pulls the soft swirls forward,

turning creation at the glory hole

to add radiant layers of a shiny

new epidermis. He strokes the

newborn head, limbs,

coaching it to reveal its own

unique

character.

Once gestated, iron scissors,

clamp and pull at her base,

water is added as the anti-

element, creating

stress.  Cut from her

maker, her annealing

convalence into

the world

begins again.