San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Chain of inspiration
In new exhibit ‘Lost in Translation,’ San Diego writers and visual artists use one another’s work as a prompt to create something new
‘What’s that saying: ‘there’s a thousand words in a picture’?” So asks Chi Essary, a local curator and arts advocate, when describing “Lost in Translation: A Game of Telephone.” Even while it’s pointed out that the saying is actually “a picture is worth a thousand words,” her reinterpretation is still somewhat fitting. Despite the fact that the phrase was filtered through Essary’s brain and rendered into a different phrase, as if in her own game of telephone, it still conveys the necessary meaning.
“But really, words are painting pictures in our mind even if it’s only three sentences of words,” Essary adds.
This statement is yet another apt distillation of “Lost in Translation,” an art exhibition opening Saturday at 6 p.m. at the San Diego Central Library Art Gallery. The concept is simple enough: A local author or poet writes a short passage and a visual artist renders those words into a piece of art. The resulting art is then given to another writer to interpret and write a new story or passage. That passage is then passed to another artist, and so on, for a few more turns.
The intent behind the exercise, and consequently the resulting exhibition, is to witness “how one person deciphers information similar or different from the initial intent,” as Essary puts it in her introduction to the show’s catalog.
The idea for the exhibition came to Essary a few years ago while she attended a bonfire, and in 2019 she curated an exhibition at Bread & Salt called “Xquisite Corpse,” named after a similar game (Exquisite Corpse) where players draw something, fold the paper to hide their drawing, and then pass it the next player for them to add to it. More recently, the Central Library approached her about a possible exhibition and she explained the concept to them.
“Each person takes it somewhere different to where you say, ‘How did they come up with that?’ ” says Essary. “And that’s what the whole project is about: how each human being brings something different to the table and they interpret the given information
in different ways based on their life, what they believe and what they have experienced.”
For “Lost in Translation,” Essary contacted Julia Dixon Evans to serve as the literary editor of the project. Evans, an author, writer and producer at KPBS, immediately began to reach out to local writers to submit a short passage centered on the topic of human communication. Once they had the initial writing prompts, the two began curating six writing/art threads over the course of a year. When it came to the writing that started one of the threads, Evans says they asked writers for something that was previously published, but would serve to entice artists to create something entirely novel.
“We needed to hit that sweet spot of something that was evocative, but with enough detail there to where an artist could latch on to it,” recalls Evans. “It needed to be something that could be drawn or inspire something beyond it.”
One of the threads begins with a passage from local poet, novelist and University of California San Diego scholar Patrick Coleman, who started the thread with a scene about a little girl looking out at the moon and seemingly crying because she will soon have to move there. It’s a passage that Dixon describes as “packed” with speculative energy.
“It’s this evocative scene where you read it and it has so much potential to be so many things that are visual, that can propel a longer thread,” says Evans.
The first artist who received Coleman’s writing was local popsurrealist and tattoo artist Jackie Dunn Smith.
‘Lost in Translation: A Game of Telephone’
When: Opens Saturday and runs through April 15. Hours 1 to 7 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays; noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays
Where: San Diego Central Library Art Gallery,
330 Park Blvd., downtown San Diego
Phone: (619) 236-5800 Online: sandiego.librarymarket.com
“That one is a fun example because each part of the thread went in ways that either was expected or not at all,” says Essary. “(Smith) ended up doing a beautiful art piece where you’re looking at the Earth and someone is in a bathing suit and there’s robots and water, and people are drowning and waterlogged. Coleman doesn’t mention any of this in his writing, so Smith really got creative with her interpretation and took it to a different place.”
One of the important corollary benefits of the exhibition is bringing together people from the local literary and visual art communities. While there are certainly overlaps in the scene, Essary and Evans both say that artists and writers sometimes might not know each other or even meet at all.
Sheena Rae Dowling agrees with this assessment. The local painter and fabric artist participated in the original “Xquisite Corpse” exhibition and says that not only did the experience help
introduce her to the author who wrote the original prompt
(Kirsten Imani Kasai), but that she and Kasai remain friends to this day.
“When you examine something in such an in-depth way and end up doing a painting inspired by it, it inspires a very different kind of connection,” says Dowling, who was the first artist to work off of Kasai’s original text, but didn’t meet the writer until the exhibition. “When I actually got to meet her in person, there was this creative connection, so much so that I ended up buying the book the passage came from and she ended up buying one of my paintings.”
The writer/artist thread that began with Kasai is one of six that will be up at the Central Library Art Gallery through April 15. Nearly 30 writers and artists participated in “Lost in Translation” and the works will be presented side by side. Vinyl renderings of the writing prompts will be the same size as the art pieces they inspired. Presented this way, it will help viewers see how each work fed into the next. Most of the writers and artists were not told who received their work after they were done and have not yet seen the work they inspired.
“It’s a great way to bring together creative people who might otherwise never see each other or meet,” says Essary. “I love interdisciplinary people coming together, because San Diego is so spread out. Hopefully it makes the world a smaller place.”
How memorable a year was 1973 for albums whose music still resonates today?
That was the question posed in my Jan. 15 Sunday Arts+culture article “Is 1973 the second-best year ever for great albums? From Bob Marley to Little Feat, you tell us!”
We asked readers to weigh in with their favorite albums from 1973 and received an array of responses, including one from a loyal online Union-tribune reader in Japan.
One of my favorites came from an irate music fan who berated me for not including albums released in 1973 by Yes, Black Sabbath and several of his other favorites. He implored me to apologize.
His letter appears below, along with the first batch of others we received. They have been edited for clarity and length.
Al Green and Bruce Springsteen
Thanks for your stimulating list. It is always interesting to see what music moves different passionate music lovers. Here is my list of five favorites from 1973: “The Spinners,” The Spinners; “Call Me,” Al Green; “Mott,” Mott the Hoople; “Five and Dime,” David Ackles; “The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle,” Bruce Springsteen.
By the way, I also found that 1973 was not close to having as many excellent releases as 1972.