The worlds of art and literature, while complementary and collaborative, are really quite different. That point was driven home to me as I took in a preview of ArtsWestchester’s exhibit “Together apART: Creating During COVID,” which opens Friday, May 7,, and runs through Aug. 1 at ArtsW’s Arts Exchange headquarters in White Plains., New York. It’s a provocative show, which I expected given the subject matter and other exhibits I’ve covered there. What I didn’t expect was how beautiful it is.
Indeed, some works might’ve been created anywhere at anytime. They were made during the height of the pandemic. But they aren’t necessarily about the pandemic. Yet even those that are about the pandemic can be stunning to look at or listen to.Jane Schechtman’s mirror surrounded by shards of Delftware, Hope Friedland’s paper fortune cookies bearing the headlines of an explosive year, David Steck’s masked, gloved, illuminated male mannequin torsos, the Hudson Valley Chorale singing Antonio Vivaldi’s “Gloria” : It’s all ravishing, the sheer loveliness of it underscoring just how brutal the pandemic was — is — because it has the power to destroy all that loveliness. Still.
I have a vested interest in the show as my short story “The Glass Door” is one of the written works in it. As fine as I think the story is — and as worthy as I’m sure the other displayed written works are — they’re no instant match for a visual work that communicates immediately or musical selections that you can listen to for a moment. The greatness of literature is also its challenge in our Instagram age: It unfolds in time. And who has time to read a story in an exhibit?
Interestingly, the thing that has radically changed complex writing — the superficial internet — can also be its friend. You can read the exhibit’s poems and stories online. The exhibit offers an introduction to them, a taste. ArtsWestchester’s website gives you the feast.
Nonetheless, to draw readers into my story at the exhibit, I collaborated with Dan Viteri, a colleague at WAG magazine, on a new cover that shows the door of a Park Slope brownstone and a note in the window — a key visual in the story. The cover seen here is one that JMS Books used when it published the story as one of its “Hot Flashes.”
Why did I choose a different cover for the show? Frankly, I thought the brownstone door would be more serious, conservative and tonier for an exhibit setting. But perhaps a handsome male face is more engaging. Certainly the Hot Flash cover accommodates more text, so we went with it for an ad in the May issue of WAG.
Is one better than the other, or are different “ad campaigns” necessary? After all, publishers and movie companies create different covers and posters to appeal to different markets. What’s wonderful is to be able to present your work on a different platform and I’m grateful to ArtsWestchester for including me in a show that evokes these lines from Robert Frost’s “The Tuft of Flowers”:
“Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
”Whether they work together or apart.”
For more, visit artswestchester.org. And for more on pandemic art, check out WAG’s May issue on “The Landscape Reinvented,” available May 7.