I was fortunate enough to receive the Maron Grant which I used to travel to Taos, New Mexico to work with the ceramic and printmaking artist Abby Salsbury of ButterPieProductions.

Abby began her art career as a ceramic artist and potter and has, over years of experimentation and exploration, translated her color and form sense into printmaking. Together we started to design a workshop for students that combines poetry and printmaking as a way of expressing human experiences.

Poetry and the graphic arts are natural bedfellows. With a written art form that rises out of 26 letters and sense experience, a graphic element can support, emphasize, and perhaps help to explain beyond the boundaries and confines of type. Together Abby and I generated writing and printmaking activities toward a goal of a ‘finished’ piece that incorporates both. It was a collaboration of artistic processes. We set a goal to spend mornings writing and afternoons working in her art studio learning techniques and exploring possibilities.

In the future, we want to construct a three to four day workshop for beginning to advanced poets who want to explore the meaning of their poetry by combining printmaking techniques. The workshop would consist of writing activities, writing workshops, printmaking technique instruction, studio time, critique, revision time, and presentation. Taos Mesa Arts also includes a gallery and exhibition space for a potential goal of showing the students’ visual works with poetry readings to the public. Many thanks to the Maron family for their wonderful support!

This article originally appeared in the 2019 Moravian Academy Fall Journal.