{"id":8230,"date":"2017-09-25T06:00:33","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=8230"},"modified":"2025-03-17T01:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T06:51:14","slug":"orange-and-sardines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/orange-and-sardines\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange and Sardines: Art and Ekphrasis in the Writing Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

By Erica Kanesaka Kalnay<\/strong>
\n<\/i><\/h4>\n

\u201cI am not a painter, I am a poet.
\nWhy? I think I would rather be
\na painter, but I am not\u2026\u201d
\n<\/em>\u2014 Frank O\u2019Hara<\/p>\n

In \u201cWhy I Am Not a Painter,\u201d a famous ekphrastic poem by Frank O\u2019Hara, the poet recalls drinking a few beers with the expressionist painter Michael Goldberg. As they drink, he watches Goldberg create a painting inspired by the word \u201csardines.\u201d When the painting is finished, O\u2019Hara observes that no sardines appear anywhere on the canvas. He goes home and writes a poem inspired by the color orange. The word \u201corange\u201d does not appear anywhere in the<\/p>\n

\"Erica
Erica Kanesaka Kalnay is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Studies at UW-Madison and has taught at the Writing Center since 2015. Her research focuses on children’s literature and aesthetic theory. In her spare time, she is also a creative writer and visual artist.y<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

finished poem, either.<\/p>\n

As a graduate student in Literary Studies, I spend most of my time tinkering around with words, but I am also an<\/p>\n

amateur visual artist. Consequently, I sometimes think about \u201cWhy I<\/em> Am Not a Painter\u201d when I meet with the many talented art students who visit the Writing Center. As they tell me about their art, I tend to feel a mixture of amazement, puzzlement, jealousy, and inspiration. Their orientation toward their studies just seems so different from my own. These feelings are, I think, not unnatural, but integral to Writing Center work. Somewhat like the encounter between the poet and the painter that O\u2019Hara depicts, Writing Center work involves crossing genres, media, and disciplines. These crossings\u2014in which we must leave our \u201ccomfort zones\u201d\u2014ideally spark dialogues that invigorate the creative processes of both: writer and tutor, poet and painter.<\/p>\n

\"Michael
Michael Goldberg\u2019s Sardines<\/em> (1955), the catalyst for Frank O\u2019Hara\u2019s \u201cWhy I Am Not a Painter.<\/a>\u201d (Image Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The practice of ekphrasis rests on similar assumptions. From the Greek \u1f14\u03ba\u03d5\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, \u201cekphrasis\u201d refers to the description of a work of visual art in a literary form. Ekphrastic writing asserts that there\u2019s something to be gained from thinking across disparate forms, from putting words to that which seems to resist them.<\/p>\n

Description in the Writing Center<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It occurs to me that a significant portion of Writing Center tutoring is, like ekphrasis, based in a practice of description, of speaking toward<\/em> something. As writers, we try to find words for things that do not yet exist in language. To find these words, we often begin by describing what we think we \u201csee\u201d: whether it\u2019s what we notice in a work of art\u2014a painting, a poem, a novel\u2014or what we notice in our research. We look for links, patterns, particulars, shapes, and gaps. And then we attempt to describe them.<\/p>\n

\"Orange
One of my own paintings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For instance, a typical Writing Center session might begin like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The writer describes the task or problem they\u2019re facing.<\/li>\n
  2. The writer describes the object(s) of analysis: the text, the experimental data, etc.<\/li>\n
  3. The writer describes the rough idea or argument (as distinct from actually making <\/em>an argument).<\/li>\n
  4. The writer describes the challenges of presenting that idea or argument.<\/li>\n
  5. The writer describes the goals for the session.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It\u2019s easy for these moments of description to start to feel routine. However, I find in my own experiences visiting the Writing Center that they are, in fact, extremely productive. In describing my writing and my writing process, I begin to articulate ideas that I only half-understood before someone asked me to talk about them. In this way, description can provide us with a starting point for the writing process, particularly when we\u2019re trying to speak across gaps\u2014between hunch and idea, between writer and tutor, between one discipline and another.<\/p>\n

    Descriptive Pedagogies<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"Bloom's
    Benjamin Bloom proposed the \u201cTaxonomy of Educational Objectives\u201d<\/a> in 1956. Contemporary iterations of the taxonomy, as shown above, frequently place \u201ccreating\u201d as the highest cognitive domain. However, the merging of description and creation in ekphrasis highlights one way in which cognitive domains may be interwoven. (Image Credit: Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    One reason I like \u201cdescription\u201d is that it feels unintimidating in comparison to terms like \u201canalysis,\u201d \u201ccritique,\u201d or \u201cargument.\u201d As a Writing Center tutor, I can ask writers to describe their work, and they will usually answer with confidence, rattling off the plot of Oryx and Crake <\/em>or the parts of a hydraulic motor. In contrast, when I ask writers to analyze, critique, or argue, they become much more likely to hesitate. We are told that these latter terms require more complex thinking, and that pushing students toward these higher orders is important, particularly at the university level. On Bloom\u2019s taxonomy of educational objectives, analysis, critique, and argument are typically found toward the top of the pyramid, while description falls near the bottom (see figure).<\/p>\n

    And yet, even the process of creation, a cognitive domain usually placed at the very top, can start with something as simple as \u201csardines.\u201d Ekphrastic writing is based on the premise that description does not merely create a copy of the original, but enlivens what it observes, making something new in the process. In attempting to describe something, we come to see it more clearly\u2014or even to see it afresh.<\/p>\n

    Descriptive Scholarship<\/strong><\/h3>\n
    \"Five
    The Victorian writer and art critic John Ruskin wrote prolifically about natural and artistic beauty. His five-volume work Modern Painters<\/em> describes leaf shadows, branch formations, and cloud arrangements in painstaking detail, stretching ekphrasis beyond its apparent limits (83, 132).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    But can the writing we produce in universities ever be understood as itself<\/em> descriptive? The anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes that description can assume a variety of shapes, densities, and textures, not only in a poem or story, but in scholarly writing. Geertz coins the term \u201cthick description\u201d to refer to a descriptive mode that acknowledges how signs are interwoven within larger systems of signs. For example, a wink might be described simply as the closing and opening of a single eye. However, this thin description cannot fully convey a wink\u2019s social and cultural meanings. Rather, an anthropologist\u2019s description of a wink must place it within \u201ca stratified hierarchy of meaningful structure in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted\u201d (7). In other words, we need to understand the context within which that wink occurs\u2014its coordinates in space and time and its relationship to other signs that might not be immediately visible.<\/p>\n

    More recently, in my own discipline of literary studies, scholars have likewise been debating the value of descriptive methods. The \u201cdescriptive turn\u201d calls attention to the surface of the text, refuting the idea that literary criticism must work to uncover hidden ideologies. Many of these debates draw from the work of the sociologist Bruno Latour, who writes that scholarship should seek \u201cto describe, to be attentive to the concrete state of affairs, to find the uniquely adequate account of a given situation\u201d (144). Unlike Geertz, Latour wants to do away with context altogether. For him, boxing an object of analysis into a given context is simply \u201ca way of stopping the description when you are tired or too lazy to go on\u201d (148). However, whether we see description as an end in itself, or just one of many modes that writers might assume, description can be a helpful place to start.<\/p>\n

    Description and the Artist\u2019s Statement<\/strong><\/h3>\n
    \"Book
    In June Jordan\u2019s Who Look at Me<\/em> from 1969, the young African American poet speaks back to paintings of the Western tradition that objectify members of the African diaspora. Jordan demonstrates one way in which the politics of ekphrasis can be harnessed to reconfigure the power relations between subject and object. Casting the gaze back on the painter, she writes, \u201cI am black alive and looking back at you\u201d (31).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The importance of description to Writing Center tutoring became particularly apparent to me when I began working with visual artists. An M.F.A. student in 4D Media came in for an appointment one day and asked for help writing her artist\u2019s statement. She pulled a pile of crumpled papers out of her backpack. On them were sketches and photographs of her work. She had designed a series of tents. Each tent opened up into a magical, surreal world. In one, everything was covered in pink faux fur. In another, everything assumed a polished, white surface.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI don\u2019t like writing,\u201d she admitted. She explained that words did not come naturally to her and that she communicated better in material language. This was part of what had drawn her to art in the first place. Now she was being required to produce a piece of writing that would force the multisensory dimensions of her chosen media into a language that simply didn\u2019t fit.<\/p>\n

    I could see where she was coming from. The artist\u2019s statement can be a difficult genre. It carries many of the burdens of the personal statement\u2014for example, the awkwardness of self-presentation\u2014with additional challenges specific to writing about art. Not only do words fail to perfectly convey images, but we often assume that art should \u201cspeak for itself.\u201d Then, paradoxically, we ask the artist to explain it to us.<\/p>\n

    After the session, I researched the advice typically dispensed about artist\u2019s statements. Mostly, I came up with a long list of don\u2019ts: Don\u2019t sound grandiose. Don\u2019t resort to clich\u00e9s. Don\u2019t compare yourself to other artists. Don\u2019t quote Deleuze. Don\u2019t use \u201cInternational Art English\u201d (Rule). (The art world\u2019s own distinct version of academic jargon that favors words like \u201caporia\u201d and \u201ctraverse.\u201d) While these don\u2019ts offer a useful caution against pretentiousness, I could see why they might be paralyzing. An art student might be left wondering, \u201cWhat can <\/em>an artist\u2019s statement do?\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"Book
    Claudia Rankine\u2019s Citizen: An American Lyric<\/em> (2014) responds in poetic form to works of art such as Glenn Ligon\u2019s Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background)<\/em> (1992). This etching was itself a response to an essay by Zora Neale Hurston. Rankine thus creates a prismatic effect in which ekphrasis reflects upon ekphrasis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Well, several things. On a practical level, the artist\u2019s statement serves largely unavoidable institutional interests. Schools, galleries, museums, residencies, awards, and other institutions all require artists to write about their art. However, as a museumgoer, I might also add that I enjoy reading artist\u2019s statements, and I find that they in no way detract from the aesthetic pleasure I take in viewing the art itself. Institutional imperatives aside, contemporary art has moved toward an aesthetic in which we now expect artist\u2019s statements to serve as complements to art\u2014for better or worse. So, instead of getting caught up in don\u2019ts, we might note that, at its most basic level, the genre asks artists to begin by describing. This \u201cthick description\u201d ideally enriches and expands our understanding of how works of art take shape within larger contexts.<\/p>\n

    Consequently, Sarah Eldridge, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, teaches her M.F.A. students to reframe the \u201cartist\u2019s statement\u201d as an \u201cart statement\u201d (Garrett-Petts). Intentionality is bracketed off (\u201cwhat did I try to do?\u201d) and replaced with a practice of attentive observation (\u201cwhat do I see?\u201d). Instead of interpreting or analyzing the art, the artist looks at it again and describes it.<\/p>\n

    Toward Ekphrastic Tutoring Methods<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    Because the Writing Center offers the benefit of an outside eye, it affords an ideal space for artists to practice ekphrastic skills. In addition to borrowing from many of the tools and techniques we use to teach personal statements, Writing Center pedagogies might therefore also begin to explore tools and techniques best adapted to the creative disciplines.<\/p>\n

    In my own limited experience, I\u2019ve found that working with artists at the Writing Center has stretched my tutoring methods. For example, I love how artists draw as they describe their work to me, even when I haven\u2019t explicitly asked them to do this. They\u2019ll often stop mid-sentence and pull out a pencil and sketchbook. (Engineering students do this, too.) Whenever this happens, I\u2019m forced to realize that I tend to privilege talk-based strategies. The need of artists to draw will remind me that there are other possibilities: outlining, diagramming, rereading, researching, free writing, and so forth.<\/p>\n

    \"Glenn
    Like ekphrastic writing, Glenn Ligon\u2019s <\/a>Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background)<\/em> (1992) plays with the relationship between text and image. (Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    An M.F.A. student once showed up to one of our ongoing sessions with a magazine she had designed. She wanted to create an insert that would offer readers suggestions for alterative uses to which the magazine could be put. The magazine was not only meant to be read, but flipped, cut, pasted, folded, and reworked. As she described all of this to me, I came to see that my fallback Writing Center tutoring strategies were inadequate to her particular task. But there was also something exciting about encountering a problem unlike any I\u2019d seen before. When I went home to write that evening, I saw my own work a little differently, too.<\/p>\n

    For further resources and reflections on creative approaches to Writing Center tutoring, you may be interested in: <\/em>Sarah Dimick\u2019s post<\/em> on the intersections between creative writing and Writing Center pedagogies<\/a>, <\/em>Adedoyin Ogunfeyimi\u2019s post<\/em> on storytelling in the Writing Center<\/a>, or <\/em>a previous post of mine<\/em> on the Writing Center and childhood play<\/a>. Those interested in visualization in Writing Center tutoring<\/a> may also wish to explore <\/em>Jessie Reeder\u2019s post<\/em> on this topic.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Finally, please share your thoughts in the comments. How do you use \u201cdescription\u201d in your writing and tutoring practices? Have you tutored writers working on artist\u2019s statements? What are the affordances and challenges of this genre? What methods do you think work best for tutoring artists?<\/em><\/p>\n

    ________<\/p>\n

    Works Cited<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    \u201cekphrasis, n.\u201d OED Online<\/em>. Oxford University Press, June 2017. Web. 9 July 2017.<\/p>\n

    Garrett-Petts, W.F. and Rachel Nash. \u201cRe-visioning the Visual: Making Artistic Inquiry Visible.\u201d<\/a> Rhizomes<\/em>, no. 18, 2008. Accessed 9 July 2017.<\/p>\n

    Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures<\/em>. Basic Books, 1977.<\/p>\n

    Jordan, June. Who Look at Me<\/em>. Crowell, 1969.<\/p>\n

    Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory<\/em>. Oxford UP, 2005.<\/p>\n

    O\u2019Hara, Frank. Selected Poems<\/em>. Knopf, 2009.<\/p>\n

    Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric<\/em>. Graywolf, 2014.<\/p>\n

    Rule, Alix and David Levine. \u201cInternational Art English.\u201d<\/a> Triple Canopy<\/em>, no. 16, 2012, \u00a0Accessed 9 July 2017.<\/p>\n

    Ruskin, John. Modern Painters<\/em>. Vol. 5, John B. Alden, 1885.<\/p>\n

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      [iota]<\/div>\n

      iota<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      By Erica Kanesaka Kalnay \u201cI am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not\u2026\u201d \u2014 Frank O\u2019Hara In \u201cWhy I Am Not a Painter,\u201d a famous ekphrastic poem by Frank O\u2019Hara, the poet recalls drinking a few beers with the expressionist painter Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":8243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOrange and Sardines: Art and Ekphrasis in the Writing Center - Another Word<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/orange-and-sardines\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Orange and Sardines: Art and Ekphrasis in the Writing Center - Another Word\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Erica Kanesaka Kalnay \u201cI am not a painter, I am a poet. 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