Love Letters and Hot Tongues

 

"We are animals of language. All the words that were, and all the words that will be, are sleeping inside our bodies."  Artist Leslie Dill

 

If you are a lover of letters, of language, if you've got a thing for words, if you're hot for font and a fool for the mesmerizing voluptuousness of phrases writ large and draped about, as if an old monkish scribe got manic, then get thee to the Halsey. 

Poetic Visions: From Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan, Leslie Dill's wordy and wondrous exhibition at the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art, is one good read. And it's the perfect cheap date for Valentine's Day, especially since Valentine's falls right at the start of Lent. Dill conveys the spiritual mania of New Orleans street preacher, Sister Gertrude Morgan, with a hyper-graphia reminiscent of folk artist Howard Finster, but she also demonstrates tender and fierce reverence for the Word. This exhibit is a visual ode to the power of language.

The Brooklyn-based Dill revels in the graceful architecture of letters. She creates a wall of shimmering wire that all emanates from wire-scrolled words. I'm not even sure what they say, but there's meaning in that mystery alone. There's a bride, too, if you want a little more Valentine's tie-in. 

To further celebrate Dill's artistic vision, for which, she says, poetry is the "touchstone" and language is "the pivot point,"  the Halsey is hosting a poetry series throughout the exhibition (on display through March 9). Tomorrow night is the second in the "Tongues Aflame" series, and will feature the College of Charleston's brightest talent. Last week's inaugural reading featured local poetry heavyweights Marjory Wentworth, Katherine Williams, Barbara Hagerty, Richard Garcia, Kit Loney and Susan Finch Stevens, and it was as fabulous as the art surrounding it. For those who missed it, I'm pleased to share poet Susan Finch Steven's prose poem, "How to See Visions at the Halsey." 

How to See Visions at the Halsey

by Susan Finch Stevens

Enter the gallery as though entering a book. Come alone so as not to be distracted by someone reading over your shoulder. That shoulder, the one draped with the superfluous sweater, which will unravel here to hang from you like threads, like the words that habitually spin from the dark cave of your mouth. Books change. Marvel at the strange architecture of a child’s pop-up but prepare to be regaled by apocalypse. Turn to the page that shimmers, that becomes a wall like a waterfall, like strands of hair you long to run your fingers through, to braid, to be raised up by like the prince in another book you read long ago. Remain lucid here so you will resist the longing to touch out of fear of waking in a gallery. Perhaps you can stem the urge by becoming the maiden with no hands from that long-ago book. Turn a page with your stump and Allegorical Figures bring memories of the metal hands the king once made for you. Or were they made for someone else? You will not find THE END in this book. You will find an EXIT. And when you exit you will take something that gets lost inside you like your words that have not yet found air.  It is wise to remember that the maiden had to venture out on her own before her hands became flesh.