Thursday, May 29, 2008

May Featured Artist: Nelly Rosario

Author Bio:

Nelly Rosario was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in engineering from MIT and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received numerous awards, including a 1999 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship, The Bronx Writers' Center Van Lier Literary Fellowship for 1999-2000, two National Arts Club Writing Fellowships, the 1997 Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and the 1988 National Teachers in English Writing Award. She was named "Writer on the Verge" by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001. Her debut novel Song of the Water Saints, which traces the lives of three generations of Dominican women, won a PEN Open Book Award in 2002. Currently she teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos.

Work Sample:

Justice sans Blindfold

My name is Najila Sivaka Gesbor, M.D., President and Head Surgeon of Innovative Ophthalmology Clinic.

I have no blood on my hands, so help me Horus.

It is my understanding that arrested persons are to be handcuffed with their hands in front of them—this behind-the-back standard is only for the convicted.

You accuse me of eating human eyes. Cow eyes are not human eyes, however similar. I much prefer the taste and texture of the former than that of the latter, which I imagine are rather saccharine and pliant. In addition to being considerably larger in size, cow eyes are much more bitter and salty in taste, requiring the pleasant task of cutting through fat and extraneous muscle prior to consumption. Ask any of your government officials who frequent steakhouses.

I have also sampled kangaroo and monkey eyes, both equally savory.



May 10, 2008 Salon Sit Down Discussion

This being our first meeting after the winter hiatus, we met at the Carver Museum on the perfect 100 degree day. Next door was the Saturday afternoon drumming classes (the rooms are soundproof), and through the glass panel we saw the generations streaming by on their way into the drumming circle.


Nelly expressed her wish to be in the space as a collaborative artist, and perhaps, to lead a small writing workshop. We settled in and Nelly began by introducing us to her creative process and the theoretical underpinnings to her approach.


She then continued her presentation with a discussion on the importance of artistic discourse and attention to craft as fundamental elements of her practice. She asked us to consider the question of text as object ("Why do we think text cannot move?"). Much like perusing art objects in a gallery or museum space creates an individual experience of time and space, language on the page can also function to mirror this trajectory. She described her work as "holographic" - in which the text is not only a reproduction of itself, but moves and acts as if the characters and their landscapes are present before us - the novel as crystal.

In her debut novel, Song of the Water Saints, Nelly Rosario succeeded in bridging stories between land and sea. In her forthcoming work, of which she read an excerpt previously published in Callaloo under the title "Airman Basic Training", her characters are embodying each other; they are literally exchanging their eyes. When asked to describe the composition of this new work, Nelly delves into her fascination with Gaudi - Barcelona's fanatical architect who is famous for La Sagrada Familia - and his obsession with details, with perfection and with seemingly oppositional elements. Her character, an airman, is compulsively focused on power, but is conflicted by the reality of constantly changing authorities. The author asks her character: At what point does he own himself? She asks us, as readers, to consider questions of value and worth, motivation and multiple perspectives. What would compel someone to trade eyes? How do you determine the value of your eyes in exchange with someone else’s? This is not only a theoretical contemplation, but a negotiation embodied by her characters.


When asked about other influences on her current work, Nelly spoke of “Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K LeGuin, of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino (especially “Invisible Cities”, for its structure), and Toni Morrison (specifically, the language of “Palace of Dreams”). She also spoke of her own philosophical inquiries: “Imagine looking down at the stars.”


“How can my readers exchange eyes with my characters?”


“What occupies the space between our eyes and a camera’s eyes?”


and finally, “How do we exist within infinite processes?”


I might describe Nelly’s aesthetic as the clouds left behind by comets: concurrently gracile with language and dense in conceptual and historical undertones. She herself spoke of the first time she understood beauty: living on the third floor of a building in New York City, staring at the mosaics on the floor. She was fascinated by the way the light passed through the bubble glass and danced across the hexagonal patterns of tile. Similar to what we see against our eyelids when we tightly shut them. Fractals. Things that are simultaneously broken and unified at the same time.


We talked about the concepts that Nelly had presented to us: the concepts of value and planes of sight, of language and perspective. And then, we finished by giving each other creative tasks. I agreed to share these here on the blog page for others who might want to try them.


1) Envision your work in a museum of choice – any museum – and create the piece to show there.

2) Write a dialogue between your 12 year old self and your 80 year old self – using diaries or other source materials to inform your writing.

3) Draw SWARM theory.

4) Write an application form for a completely free person. What does her day look like? What does she dream? Where does she live? What kinds of questions would she ask of the world?

5) Create collages for a week in place of writing.

Summer Line Up

The Austin Salon was on hiatus for the winter (hibernation), and has resumed with an extraordinary line-up for the summer and early fall:


May 10th, 2-4pm

Carver Museum

Austin, TX

Featured Artist: Nelly Rosario

Nelly Rosario was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in engineering from MIT and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received numerous awards, including a 1999 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship, The Bronx Writers' Center Van Lier Literary Fellowship for 1999-2000, two National Arts Club Writing Fellowships, the 1997 Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and the 1988 National Teachers in English Writing Award. She was named "Writer on the Verge" by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001. Her debut novel Song of the Water Saints, which traces the lives of three generations of Dominican women, won a PEN Open Book Award in 2002. Currently she teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos.


June 14th, 2-4pm

Carver Museum

Austin, TX

Featured Artist: Amanda Johnston

Cave Canem Fellow and Affrilachian Poet, Amanda Johnston has performed across the country for various causes and events. Honors include a 2003 and 2004 Artists Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the 2005 Austin International Poetry Festival's Christina Sergeyevna Award. Currently, Johnston serves on the board of directors for the National Women's Alliance, is an ensemble member of The Austin Project Performance Company (TAPPCo) and is the founding editor of Torch: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women. www.torchpoetry.org


July 5th, 2-4pm

Carver Museum

Austin, TX

Featured Artist: A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan is the author of Rise and MACNOLIA. Among other awards, Jordan has received the Whiting Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Jordan teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and serves on the faculty at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Austin, Texas.


August 9th, 2-4pm

Location TBA

Austin, TX

Featured Artist: Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir is the author of Where the Apple Falls: poems, editor of Best Black Women's Erotica 2 and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. She has also published two chapbook poetry collections: Wearing Shorts on the First Day of Spring & American Visa. Her poetry, stories, articles, essays and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications including: Callaloo, Essence, Contemporary American Women Poets, among many others. Bashir is a fellow with Cave Canem and a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writer's festival for LGBT writers of African descent. She's currently wrasslin' poetry, paint, stuffed bunnies and sunshine in Austin, Tejas. website: samiyabashir.com