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Fountains are among the most admired ornamental manmade structures because they combine the artistic beauty of refined sculpture with the precision of engineering and architecture. Celebrated examples can be found all over the world, including Savannah, Georgia. One of the city's most famous is the subject of two new Postered Chromatic Poetics images. Below is the text for them and although I like both, I confess to being particularly pleased by the results achieved with Champagne Twilight:

CHAMPAGNE TWILIGHT: FORSYTH PARK FOUNTAIN IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA (USA)

The elegantly-sculpted Forsyth Park Fountain, also referred to as the Versailles Fountain, dates back to the 1850s when model for it was derived from French-styled designs of the period. Along with the Confederate Monument, this is one of the primary centerpieces of Forsyth Park. The present-day fountain is the result of many renovations over the past century and a half, including a complete restoration in 1988.

A robed woman adorns the top of the fountain as water birds and tritons (or mermen) spout water below. In addition to benches that allow passersby to sit and enjoy the view, the fountain is surrounded by moss-covered oaks, palm trees, magnolias, and elms.

Prior to becoming known as Forsyth Park, the location during the Civil War was the South Common military encampment where POWS and a hospital were maintained.


SEPIA AFTERNOON: FORSYTH PARK FOUNTAIN IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA (USA)

A solitary figure stops in front the Forsyth Park Fountain to enjoy one of the city of Savannah's most popular and majestic attractions.
Ever since the days following the American Civil War, the fountain has been a favorite location for residents and visitors alike to take photographs. During the war, the park was known as the South Common military encampment where prisoners of war, a hospital, and poor house were maintained.

The fountain's spraying water is dyed green every year in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. In this image, late afternoon sunlight on a hot summer day creates an amber sepia haze that colors the air and water, slightly clarified and enhanced by digital filter.

Aberjhani

The Dare to Love Yourself "movement" had nothing to do with National Selfie Day when it began to slowly develop ten years ago. The well-known quote--"Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends."-- as many are now aware, originated with the poem Angel of Healing: for the Living, the Dying, and the Praying.

The poem was first published in the book The Bridge of Silver Wings and later in The River of Winged Dreams. It has become increasingly popular over the past few years as a rallying cry to support suicide prevention and to discourage suicide bombers. The association with National Selfie Day was never intentional but obviously a natural one which hopefully helps encourage not narcissism but a positive healthy self-image and a deep appreciation for all life.

The following descriptions are for recently-added images that celebrate the potential healing capacity of love in all our lives:


AS GOES LOVE, SO GOES LIFE

The title of this artwork comes from the poem "The Poet-Angels Who Came to Dinner" published in the book The River of winged Dreams. An earlier alternative version features a different color scheme.

The design used for this one was chosen because instead of idealizing hopes centered around romantic love, it seeks to evoke to many nuances of all kinds of love: family, spiritual, friendship, joy of living, pursuit of creative goals, etc. It also acknowledges that Love is often as much a struggle to maintain as it is a pleasure to be enjoyed.

The complete first stanza of the poem from which the quotation was taken reads as follows:

I.
Neither had been invited but both were welcomed.
They spoke through wordless intuition, cool nods of
"Peace-Be-Still," and, "As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life."


DARE TO LOVE YOURSELF ON NATIONAL SELFIE DAY

Loving yourself isn't just about the photographs we post to our social media profiles to show the world we know how to have fun. It's mostly about recognizing where we fit in the larger scheme and how our lives contribute meaning and value to the world. This the poem, published in The River of Winged Dreams, from which the dare-to-love-yourself quote is taken:
Angel of Healing: for the Living, the Dying, and the Praying

1.
As you bury flesh––
honor spirit, savor hope,
cherish memory.

Consider heaven
as a world-weary stranger
asleep in your heart.

Quote words that affirm
all men and women are your
brothers and sisters.

Pull the child away
from feeding at the mule’s tail.
Give the baby food.

2.
Compassion crowns the soul with its true st victory.
Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate.
Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.
Wisdom applied internally corrects ignorance lived externally.

3.
Dare to love yourself
as if you were a rainbow
with gold at both ends.

Write a soft poem
to one you called bitch, shit head,
nigger, fag, white trash.

Live certain days dressed
in your lover’s smiling soul
while she, he, wears yours.

Imagine your mind
wings intent on expanding
and watch your joy fly.

Aberjhani
May 2017

Who hasn't at some point wished they could just fly off somewhere, like birds or other winged things, without dishing out cash for a ticket or becoming unwillingly intimate with pat-down procedures? My homage to winged beings actually began a long time ago but here at Fine Art America I'm approaching a favorite symbol from a new angle with two new images:

BEAUTIFUL FLIGHT OF PEGASUS AND THE GOLDEN EAGLE

"In the valley of the shadow of broken worlds your wings dazzled and light reclaimed its beautiful power."

Aberjhani (from The River of Winged Dreams)

The winged horse Pegasus and the Golden Eagle are two of our most powerful symbols from mythology and nature. The beauty of both have been known to inspire courage and hopefulness during times of personal crisis or chaotic upheavals in the world.

The quote in fact is from a poem about Christmas, but you think about all the disorder and instability currently shaking up world communities it fits well.
The sample presented with this post is a horizontal detail from the larger piece.

WE’RE STILL HERE AND HOPE YOU ARE TOO

This shot of 4 seagulls on a River Street pier in Savannah, Georgia, is another taken the morning after Hurricane Matthew downed trees and swept water throughout the city.

A lot of people avoided the threat of physical from the hurricane by evacuating the city before it hit. Others huddled together either in the sturdiest structures they could find or wherever they happened to be.

But it always seems a mystery how seagulls and other birds and animals manage to survive such powerful weather events then show up the next day looking as calm as this flock. To me, their countenance seems to quietly state: We’re still here and hope you are too.

Aberjhani

One of the hardest questions posed by recent headlines in the U.S. has been: How do we come to terms in 2017 with legacies of an American past during which racism and other forms of social injustice were openly practiced? It's not a question that can be ignored because we're seeing so many of the results from it in the form of a rising number of hate groups and more overt promotions of fascist and nihilistic ideologies.

Several of my newest Postered Chromatic Poetics images examine the roots of some lot of the negativity--from racial tension and the economic divide to religious conflicts and the gender gap-- we're seeing now. They are less about shouting out accusations than about inviting reflections. The following are the text for them:

SOUTHERN TREES AND THE STRANGE FRUIT THEY BEAR (I)

I don't think Billie Holiday would mind me paraphrasing hers and Lewis Allen's famous song for the title of this image: Savannah's famous Confederate Monument as seen through curtains of gray Spanish moss hanging from the limbs of an oak tree in Forsythe Park.

Like many such monuments throughout the southern United States, notably the one recently removed from a public space in New Orleans, this one has been the subject of some controversy. You can't really tell by the angle used here but this is one of the largest Confederate monuments in the country.

The gentleman who posed for it was Civil War veteran Hamilton Branch.



SOUTHERN TREES AND THE STRANGE FRUIT THEY BEAR (II)

This is a variation on the first Southern Trees and the Strange Fruit They Bear.

Like many such monuments throughout the southern United States, notably the one recently removed from a public space in New Orleans, this one has been the subject of some controversy. You can't really tell by the angle used here but this is one of the largest Confederate monuments in the country. The gentleman who posed for it was Civil War veteran Hamilton Branch.


EUGENE TALMADGE MEMORIAL BRIDGE AND THE SERIOUS POLITICS OF NECESSARY CHANGE

A lot of articles have been written about why the name of the bridge spanning the Savannah River between the city and Hutchinson Island needs to be changed. Simply put: many feel it endorses white supremacy and ignores the obvious painful affront to Savannah's majority African-American population and its larger progressive diverse community.

During a 2016 "Span the Gap" initiative advocating for the change, a reporter named Janet Leigh Lebos asked for my input on the issue. The following is from her articled published in CONNECT SAVANNAH:

"Well, thus far it seems because the will of Savannah’s citizenry has been thwarted by the intimidation ploys of a few bullies—tactics familiar to Eugene Talmadge, who used them to oppress and abuse anyone he didn’t like. That’s what we’re memorializing unless we support our elected officials in getting this done already—not next session, not next election cycle.

"'It should not be necessary in 2016 to stage marches across the bridge or have sit-ins on it to disrupt the illusion, or delusion, of normalcy in order to bring about a crucial intelligent change,' counsels Aberjhani.

"It shouldn’t be necessary, but maybe that’s what it will take. It actually sounds pretty awesome: To climb to the apex of that two-mile marvel with our neighbors and friends as the giant ships sail beneath, hand in hand as we stand up in the name of connecting Savannah with the right side of history."
(Janet Leigh Lebos, CS, April 13, 2016, http://www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/name-shaming-the-talmadge-bridge/Content?oid=3432869 )

Aberjhani
May 2017

I just added 3 images to a new FAA collection called Sojourns in Cosmopolitan Multicultural Savannah. Because the city is an odd mixture of diverse cultures framed within some intense southern history, the text provides a bit more background than what is used for most collections. They are, beginning with the description for the collection itself, as follows:

Sojourns in Cosmopolitan Multicultural Savannah: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/posteredchromatic-poetics.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=726286

Savannah, Georgia (USA), is a city of many cultural expressions and historical influences. It is one of America's original 13 colonies and often appears on lists of top tourist destinations.

This image gallery features fine art photographic images and digital creations in both color and black white. It showcases a unique perspective on various popular sites of historical and sociological significance. In some cases, the images underscore rarely-discussed issues evolving around racial tensions and the so-called wealth divide.

IMAGES


OWENS-THOMAS HOUSE IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

Built in 1817-1819, the Owens-Thomas House mansion is part of the Telfair Museums complex and a National Historic Landmark building. It is often described as one of the finest examples of Regency architecture in the United States and when designed and constructed, by architect William Jay, was considered extremely sophisticated.

It is prized today by historians and tourists as a prime example of an urban antebellum structure where slave quarters remain intact behind the main building.

At a time (the 2010s) when large numbers of Savannah's indigenous African-American population are falling prey to gentrification, the elegant mansion is also an important reminder of how far they have come since the American Civil War.


EUGENE TALMADGE MEMORIAL BRIDGE THE MORNING AFTER HURRICANE MATTHEW

Commonly referred to as the Savannah Bridge, the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge was named after a former governor of Georgia. The name is an extremely controversial one because although rightly lauded for his labors on behalf of many, Talmadge was also known to have been an unapologetic white supremacist. Various campaigns to have the name changed have failed but various advocates of diversity and multiculturalism continue to encourage awareness and change.

The photographic image seen here was taken Oct 8, 2016, the morning after Hurricane Matthew swept through the area. The seagull silhouetted near center foreground atop a post held still just long enough for this shot be taken and then flew off.
This is dedicated in memory of the late photographer Jack Leigh, who was a native of Savannah and a master of black and white photography.


THE HURRICANE AND THE CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

One of the city of Savannah's most admired public spaces, Forsyth Park, became a devastated landscape after the edge of Hurricane Matthew swept through the city on October 7 and 8, 2016. The giant toppled tree seen in this image was one of many that transformed the normally garden-like tranquility of Forsyth Park into something more like a foreboding swamp or a war zone.

The park was the location of an important campground during the American Civil War. That historical footnote is commemorated by the tall fenced-in Confederate Monument framed by the clearing sky, and the smaller bust of Confederate Army Major General Lafayette Laws.

The abundance of monuments documenting history considered important to Southern Whites in contrast to the paucity of such monuments acknowledging the city's large African-American population's accomplishments has long been a source of political and social contention.

Aberjhani

(blog photo of Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences museum building by Aberjhani)

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is a continuation of the previous blog discussing changes in the publishing industry in regard to books of art and poetry. Publication of the ekphrastic art and poetry collection ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love, proved an exception to the rule made possible by an invested community. Next month, May 29, 2017, will mark the ninth anniversary of the publication of the celebrated work by artist Luther E. Vann and myself:

Living Art, Living Poetry (continued)
Until the advent of the modern self-publishing and “author services” industry, getting any book published by an author who had yet to establish him- or herself as a viable commodity within the literary marketplace was much like running, at first one decade-long marathon to build up enough courage to call oneself an author, and then a second to convince a bona fide publishing house that you were not delusional by making such a claim.

This meant books of poetry published outside the academic arena were considered foolishly frivolous investments, and books of art extravagant pleasures afforded the few but not the many. Yet at how many graduation ceremonies, political functions, funerals, weddings, conventions, and other life-defining events are the words of poets evoked to clarify the spirit and substance of the occasion at hand? On how many rainy days and in how many hours of stifled desperation has an individual made her way into a museum or gallery and took healing refuge in an image that bore witness to their heart’s challenging journey?

There is much that could be said about ELEMENTAL as an extraordinary gift of manifested vision in the lives and works of two creative artists. We can note the still amazing fact of how I first came across Luther E. Vann’s work on exhibit at the Beach Institute on May 30, 1991, and found myself transcribing his painted worlds into notes for poems and essays long before considering the possibility they might one day serve as the foundation for a book. Or we may consider how the journey started on that day took another 17 years––almost to the day!–– before arriving at the destination of publication. From the writer-poet’s perspective, I remain humbled by the history accumulated along the way and which in times of doubt helped renew motivation and creative energy. That the poems eventually included in ELEMENTAL contained value far beyond kudos for an individual author was made evident when audiences at coffee house open mics expressed their enthusiasm and readers of those poems published in ESSENCE Magazine did so as well.

The greatest testimony, however, came when the story of the struggle to publish ELEMENTAL reached members of the Telfair Museum Friends of African-American Art and they in turn shared it with the city of Savannah. Members of the community (SEE “Thank You Gracious Contributors” page in Google book preview) then chose to have their say by contributing funds to raise the monies necessary to get the book published. They succeeded in a spectacular way that remains profoundly inspiring.

Whereas the great historian and humanitarian W.E.B. Du Bois once observed that “the cause of war is preparation for war,” the actions of those who made ELEMENTAL possible led me to consider that the cause of beauty and grace in the world is humanity’s empowerment of beauty and grace in the world. While it is unlikely that poetry or art shall eliminate the reality of war in the twenty-first century, it is thrilling to know there remain individuals, and even entire communities, still willing to invest in art and poetry’s own uniquely explosive contributions to the great, and small, dramas of human history.

by Aberjhani

Art and poetry have long functioned as a kind of team in my creative life. It’s interesting at this point, while setting up the profile here on Fine Art America, to recall the different who have inspired me.

I never intended to make attempts at doing what they did, and do, so expertly. I usually wrote about their work or composed poetry inspired by it. Any number of times they were kind enough to provide cover art for my books. Now I’m branching out a bit and enjoying producing some images which I hope people find engaging on a few different levels.

Among the artists I worked with the most was the late Luther E. Vann, with whom I created the book of art and poetry titled ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love. The excerpt below talks about how we viewed the traditions of combing ekphrastic poetry and art. It from my essay, Living Art, Living Poetry, on the Anniversary of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love:

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
––Leonardo da Vinci

There’s nothing surprising in the observation that literary artists and visual artists often combine their talents to create works which, when joined together, allow each to transcend possible limitations of the other. The literary artist lends verbal depth to the visual. The visual artist provides visible articulation for the literary.

The goal of each has generally been the same: to fashion out of the raw material of creativity a symbol—or an image—capable of communicating some significant experience of truth, beauty, life, or death, to the observer. And there have been in fact any number of successful partnerships between such creatively charged intellects. Artist Romare Bearden and playwright Ntozake Shange’s I Live in Music comes to mind; as does various works by Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca; the visual style of Aaron Douglas and the literary voices of the Harlem Renaissance; the French poet and critic Apollinaire Guillaume, whose literary loyalty empowered the bohemians of Picasso’s early days; and more recently, poet Coleman Barks’ interpretations of Jalal Al-Din Rumi “illuminated” by Michael Green.

I meditate upon these creative artists’ subtle yet titanic achievements at this time for two reasons: one is because the ear-drum shattering booms of war and the soul-numbing cracklings of human discontent that continue to echo across planet Earth remind us of how painted and verbalized visions help people retain a sense of context and harmony in an era that too often seems to make such notions—like black and white TVs-- utterly obsolete. The second reason is because May 29, 2010, marks the second anniversary of the publication celebration for the art and poetry gift book, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, held at the Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, Georgia. A third less official reason is because recently ELEMENTAL was added to the Google Book search engine, which means those unfamiliar with it may now enjoy an extended preview .

Considering the legacies of visual art in partnership with literary art, in general, reinforces the powerful resources they still provide. Contemplating the anniversary of ELEMENTAL in particular renews appreciation for the extraordinary milestone it continues to represent.

PART 2 FOLLOWS

Aberjhani

Created by author and digital artist Aberjhani, ®Posted Chromatic Poetics is a style of creative visual media that presents original poetry and other literary statements as visualized art. It utilizes digital schematics, found objects, collage, and other brand source elements to fuse language and chromatic symbols into lyrical statements on humanity's challenges and triumphs.

Posted Chromatic Poetics is the fine arts operation branch of Bright Skylark Literary Productions that oversees the creation and distribution of official ®Postered Poetics artwork.

A veteran of the U.S. Air Force and native of Savannah, Georgia (USA), Aberjhani is multi-talented creative artist. His visual work is sometimes posted with his well-known poetry and blogs featuring his essays on literature, politics, spirituality, journalism, and the creative muse. He has authored a dozen books and served as an editor on a dozen more. The author-artist a winner of the Thomas Jefferson Award for his journalism, the Choice Academic Title and Best History Book Awards for his historical writings, the Creative Loafing Critic’s Pick Best Savannah Author Award for general authorship, and the Connect Savannah Poet and Spoken Word Artist of the Year Award for his poetry, as well as the Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait Award for stories on the late King of Pop.

His books include: Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player (a novel, 2016); The River of Winged Dreams (poetry, 2010); The Bridge of Silver Wings (2009); ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008, with artist Luther E. Vann); The American Poet Who Went Home Again (2008); Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World (2007/2008); Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black (2006); Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2003, Facts On File); The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003, Kensington Books);and I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1997, Washington Publications).