Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Michael Behle has created 'The Created Thing'



An image of this piece is already up here linked from the mockup of the show, but I wanted to give its only little space to Michael Behle's contribution to the 2008 Poetry Scores Art Invitational, The Created Thing, which has an opening bid of $15o at Friday's silent auction.

The subject of this year's invitational is Nailed Seraphim by the great K. Curtis Lyle. The event will be held 6-10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21 at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary, 3100 Sutton Blvd. in Maplewood, and will include Curtis' perfornance of the poem backed by three of the area’s most talented and versatile musicians: Baba Mike Nelson, David A.N. Jackson and Christopher Y. Voelker.

The show features more than 25 artists from St. Louis, Chicago and Los Angeles. The artists have all responded to the poem that is the subject of the event, and they titled their work after a verbatim quote from the poem. The work will be arranged in the exhibit space based upon where in the flow of the poem the quote chosen as the title appears.

The title of Mike's piece appears in the sixth of the poem's seven sections. That section is brief enough to be shared in full:

*

6. The House of God Is Also A Black Hole

Those who experience the created thing
Must also experience the uncreation

Mortice caught on fire
And got completely fulfilled
He came back home
And got completely cancelled

It was sort of like training for twenty years
To climb Mount Everest

Your time comes
You make the ascent
You court that impeccable calling
You come back home
You get run down in the street and killed
While jay walking
*

Five of the pieces in the show respond to these few lines (the entire poem is vast in scope), and one can see why. Looking at the lines, I see a piece no one else has made yet titled "killed/While jay walking" that I'll have to draw and color with my kid one cold day this winter.
The opening is free, the Schlafly beer will be free, the company will be stellar, and great art will be on auction for modest opening prices, all sales final that night. See ya there.

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