|
Maria's
Cards
art "au naturel"
Maria Cowley's art is more than desert hues and subtlety.
When she draws the desert plants and animals, she finds their personality -- like the
Joshua tree above, ruffled, a little out of breath, waving his arms in
exasperation or encouragement or both.Maria
now shares her desert in a series of greeting cards being carried in gift
and flower shops. It's emotive art where,
using digital techniques, the artist takes us past the tough hide of
the cactus, through the pretty sandstone colors -- and figures out what the desert is feeling.
The Country
poetry
|
|
Maybe you were raised there -- The Country. Maybe you fled from the
limitations of farm and small town to the greater possibilities of the city.
And maybe you wonder now, if it was impatience or luck that got you out of
there. Full circle.
The Country is a history...of pioneers settling the land and teenagers
settling the score. It's youth: "...beer
on the floorboard and anticipation in our throats." It's
dying. It's sex -- at that time of life when sex is coin of the
realm:
|
in the rosy heat of the neon tubes i
laid my hand between Colleen's thighs
and the child i'd been was sent away
|
It's ice-fishing and it's Indians and it's
irreverent:
|
...as the pioneers splattered to earth in tents and
hovels beneath adobe, brick, and bare wood,
the Lord must have chuckled at the joke He
was cooking for this futile
land
for
they pounced on it like cats and turned its
innards to the sun, baking a gourmet country
a feast of living
|
The Country is northern
Wyoming...by an expatriate who sometimes loved the place,
often feared it, and always felt as if he was missing the
point.
|
|
|
|
|
Frog Blankets
|
|
|
...suppose God is a
cowboy "lookin' fer a prophet." Suppose pterodactyls
are flying reconnaissance missions inside a sex-crazed computer
named Gretl. And suppose the woman you love is living half a
dozen lives concurrently....
...all because of a ricochet from God's cap pistol.
An excerpt from Frog Blankets....
God turned to
Jonathan, "Let Me tell ya somethin',
boy. This here all-seein', all-knowin' God thang's been completely misunderstood
by ya'll. That ain't how it works. Ya see, everthin' that happens is writ on a
page in a Book, to be read by Me whenever I git a minute, or when I need to
look somethin' up.
"Now then, when I need to
know somethin', I just glances o'er that page 'n I know what to do. Simple enough, right?"
"How do You know what page
it's on?" Jonathan asked.
"Huh?"
"The page in the Book of Eternity. There
must be a lot of them. How do You know which one?"
" 'cause I'm God!" God
shouts impatiently. "I mightn't not know what's on th' page, but I know
what page it's on!"
|
|
|
