Compass Rose

We've Moved!

2009-02-20T10:59:00.007-05:00

We've recently completed our transition to WordPress.com. From now on, all COMPASS ROSE updates will be available at our new location, Compass Rose Online.

Keep watching our new site for updates from Volume IX of COMPASS ROSE, available Spring 2009.

2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize Winner Announced

2009-01-30T12:03:00.004-05:00

Patricia Savage has been selected as the 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize winner by judge Ilya Kaminsky.

The following were finalists for the prize:

M. Lee Alexander, “Lane Bryant, 6 pm” and “The Foreclosure”
Evan Ernst, “Superman”
Claire Keyes, “Dulcinea”
Michelle Maher, “Early Summer”
Penelope Scambly Schott, “How to survive a fall through the ice” and “Fugitive Memory”
Nina Soifer, “In Julia Child’s Backyard”
Jean Tupper, “Eventually He Was Missing”
Roberta Visser, “Lines Written after Watching Kaddish: Music of Remembrance and Hope”
Matthew Williams, “i beg for rationalization”

The 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:

Rewards
Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have considered heaven
All of us, hanging out,
No worries, time on our hands,
No clock to punch,
No kids to get through calculus and college,
No one falling into my arms,
Exhausted at day’s end.
No more longing simmering
Like a pot of tomatoes
On the back burner of my soul.

I have considered this life,
When I don’t back away from choice
Or stop loosing myself on a blank page
Or in the woods behind my house.
I keep risking all I have to love better,
To see things with new heart,
Staying with my breath, constant and steady.
I have not given up on wanting more
Out of nearly every day.

When I am done, I want to be all used up.
I want to be tossed in the air, scattered everywhere.
Dust,
Imperceptible but part of the
Huge space we call empty.

Ilya Kaminsky to Judge Parnell Poetry Contest

2008-07-18T15:44:00.004-04:00

COMPASS ROSE is pleased to announce poet Ilya Kaminsky will judge the sixth annual Pat Parnell Poetry Contest. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine.

In addition, Ilya writes poetry in Russian. His work in that language was chosen for "Bunker Poetico" at Venice Bienial Festival in Italy. In late 1990s, he co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization which sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad with a goal of supporting such relief organizations as Doctors Without Borders and Survivors International. To learn more about Kaminsky, please visit his website at ilyakaminsky.com.

Contest Guidelines
Please submit no more than five (5) poems between August 1 and November 15, 2008. The contest fee is $5 for each poem ($10 for two poems, $15 for three poems and so on). Please do not put any personal information on the poems themselves; instead enclose a cover letter with your name, titles of your work, and contact information. All entries are read blind. Poems that include personal information will not be read and fees will not be refunded. Make checks payable to COMPASS ROSE.

Please send all submissions via postal mail to:
Pat Parnell Poetry Contest
c/o Prof. Jenn Monroe
Chester College of New England
40 Chester Street
Chester, NH 03036

We will not accept email submissions, but are happy to answer questions that way. Contact us at compass.rose@chestercollege.edu.

Allan Peterson and Christine Ecklund

2008-04-18T12:37:00.003-04:00

Happening Again
Allan Peterson

I say it again because it is happening again
The clothes that pretend to love me
are out there laughing and dancing on the line
glad to be free of me especially the shirts
whiter than I remember and unconfined

It is like the last line of September
when things are fully preparing for themselves
worm rolling up its leaf and painting the walls
with silk turning inward as if receiving a memo
on the first freeze and paradoxically the squirrels
are carrying leaves back inside the tree
as if reloading for next spring

In the theory of wind the infinitesimal heart
is moved by the least force and the earliest emotions
were observed in the laundry of the Middle East and Asia
whose shirts and tunics revealed that happiness was
lighter than air like the breath of animals rising in cold
I see its repeatable physics joking with the coast
I put my arms into them again. We console each other.

The Old Man In The Bed
Christine Ecklund

The old man in the bed is her father, not quite her dad. Connected to him are a few tubes she can see and a couple she can’t, which is just as well for both of them. She is his youngest and the one who knows him least. Until recently, she has been mostly grateful for that. She’s always been told she had his smile, his Swedishness, a little at the tip of the nose. more

Julius James DeAngelus

2008-05-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

Lancaster Best
Julius James DeAngelus

I read once that more than seeing, hearing, touching or tasting, our sense of smell offers us the most direct route to our past. Therefore, I hope it doesn’t sound so strange to you that whenever the scent of sharp provolone cheese reaches me, with its rich, musty, locked-away-and-forgotten aroma, I am eighteen again and madly in love. more

Lauren Scharhag and Ashley Cowger

2008-05-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

West Side Girl
Lauren Scharhag

I wear my skin like some reject from the Tribes of Ham,
Pale and transparent as skim milk. I can never go home.

My father imparted to me like a curse:
“You’re just like your mother. You’ll never
Be able to live more than thirty miles from the West Side.”
And I think, Of course. He’s right.
He’s always right when I don’t want him to be.

And I wonder if it’s this curse, his curse,
Which also gifts him to be able to see into me,
And I to endure the pain of being seen. After all, my skin is his skin.

Ah, Marìa, Marìa, Marìa-- las très,
Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother,
And I am the break in the rosary beads.
I think of the placenta from my grandmother’s birth buried on the hill,
The hill, which I can never go back to.

Instead, I toe the thirty-mile mark.
“¡Bolilla!” They say. “¡Gringa!”
At nine, I saw myself as naked as Eve,
And hurried to cover up my whiteness.

Now I go, bearing my flesh like shame,
And the neighbors ask who the white girl is who comes and visits.

Someday, I will take a grater to my skin.
I shall cast it off. Flayed, I shall anoint myself with cuminos and cilantro.
In blood I shall make my pilgrimage.
On the Boulevard, I shall hail, Marìa.

Peter Never Came
Ashley Cowger

I was sitting on the edge of the counter, my feet dipping recklessly into the dirty sink, and he was sitting on the side of the bathtub, compulsively rubbing the soap grime along the rim with his thumb.
“I used to believe in Peter Pan,” I told him, leaning the side of my head against the bathroom mirror and closing my eyes. more

Jessica Silver and Yvonne Garrett

2008-05-02T13:05:00.001-04:00

Bella
Jessica Silver

My sister if I had one
Would dress in red
Would star in porn films and lie about her day job

My sister if I had one
Would start bar fights
With beautiful girls
Walking away with rage in her eyes

My sister if I had one
Would dance alone in the bathroom
While I waited to shower

She would breathe alcohol
Swearing she was an addict

Promise to be there
But forget where there was

Break mirrors
Daring bad luck

She would chain smoke to the edge of dreams
Setting her bed on fire

She would wake from her inferno
Sneaking into my room
Mumble she was there just for the night

Like A River
Yvonne Garrett

Built in 1908 on a hill overlooking the mouth of the Columbia, the house stands huge against the sky with multiple rooflines, projecting bays, balconies, a widow’s walk and a two-story tower. Its dark peaked roof and chimneys are creeper-twined with open overhanging eaves. more

Joanne Lowery and Marie Stern

2008-04-25T12:55:00.001-04:00

Muse Weeping
Joanne Lowery

What she provokes could flood Babylon
or rot the foundations of Alexandria.
Here in America, suburbs stay high and dry.
Our poets walk city streets inspired
by soot and taxi horns, the staccato
of fast walkers passing them by.
Anyone waiting at a crosswalk
needs a handkerchief for staunching.
She looks up, remembers the 41st floor
where she pushed a lover out the window.
For the seconds it took him to land
she felt his fear and weightlessness.
Her tears lubricate the description
of that head-over-heels plunge.
On the sidewalk is a puddle of her undoing.

The Dying Sounds
Marie Stern

The light from the TV made Jason’s face look biliously gray, anemic. “I didn’t think you could get through the biological clock anymore. There just aren’t those kind of loopholes. That’s gotta be faked. There’s no way.” more

R. Elena Prieto and Laura Esther Wolfson

2008-03-14T10:16:00.003-04:00

Grandparents’ House, Venezuela
R. Elena Prieto

I remember the slow juicing
of oranges, her turning wrist,
blue and white napkins with birds
on the table. Pájaros still sounds
like flight to me, the pulse of air
snapping beneath scarlet and green wings,
nectarized bird song. Pio pios
in the chicken yard. My early
memories are hothouse flashes of color
glazed with the musk of warm rain,
tortoises and their slow crawl
in the backyard. Every morning
fresh orange juice, every afternoon
a push on the swing, a nap in a small bed
that blanketed me with dusty
breaths of cedar, lavender.

He Picked Me Up; Then He Picked Me Up Again
Laura Esther Wolfson

I had set aside that weekend for a one-night stand. I would be done with my grueling, six-week French course at McGill. It would be my last weekend in Montreal before going back to life in New York. I had been unable to meet anyone unless I was out of town. This would be my last opportunity for a while. more

Marsha Lee Berkman

2008-04-04T12:20:00.002-04:00

Orphans
Marsha Lee Berkman

In my memory it is always summer. Winters in the middle of the country where I grew up were freezing, bitter, and dismal, but the summers were usually fiercely hot and humid. Not so good during the day if you had to be out working in it, but wonderful in the evenings after supper, when it had cooled off. more

Nancy Tupper Ling and Eric Pinder

2008-03-28T12:06:00.009-04:00

I Tell the Truth
Nancy Tupper Ling (2006-2007 Parnell Prize Winner)

a good mother wanted
her children to denounce her,
her Kuomintang ties,
her rightest secrets:

how she tucked dried plums
into her daughters’ pockets
when other children
went without,

how she stitched the Golden
Gate to her pillowcase,
Slept on its strong, burnished
beams and dreamed

of her sisters, their shoebox
houses tucked into America’s
hillsides. Gwo laih.
They call to her. Come over.

This was the only way.
If her children pounded
their fists, waved their red
flags, saluted the Chairman

as he passed by, the party
pledged honor to them.
At what cost? A tiny mother
in rice paddies: her feet,

swollen and muddied,
her prayer—may they forget
the words, their words,
which brought me here.

Signs of the Times
Eric Pinder

Imagine my surprise when I pushed the playback button on my home answering machine and heard a familiar voice: “Hello, this is George W. Bush...” Beep. That was the only message. Oddly, the President forgot to leave a number where I could call him back. more

Martha Christina and Shaindel Beers

2008-04-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

Associations, Pond Side
Martha Christina

A splash of orange fin above the brackish water. . .
My father and I cross the Third Street Bridge,
careful of the men leaning and casting
their lines into the polluted lake

The maple tree unfurls its leaves. . .
In the emergency room
there weren’t enough blankets
to warm my dying father;
even if he’d been the only patient,
he couldn’t have been warmed.
His hands curled
over the faded bindings

A Monarch butterfly lights on the honeysuckle. . .
I’ve been dreaming again of my father
when he was healthy. Often
he appears in a cloud of butterflies,
his hands opening and closing,
like their wings

Longing on Hwy 10
Shaindel Beers

The Shell station is a horrible ship going nowhere. She feels lucky that it is
not a Mobil station or the irony would be too much. The cars drift along on
their way to Hwy 10—the only road out of this—the only town—she’s
known. more

Kevin McIntosh

2008-03-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

At the Zoo
Kevin McIntosh

"No, no Meggie. Put it down. That's not to touch." How could there be so many cigarette butts at a children's zoo? What were people thinking?
"Pin-guins, Daddy. Want to see pin-guins."
"Okay, sweetie.” He swirled her into his arms and brushed back the blond curls that were matted to her forehead. The late-June humidity glued her to his side. Jesus, what heat. more

Joanne N. Ford and Thomas Juvik

2008-02-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

Therapy in Photographic Time
(A Tribute to Ansel Adams)

Joanne N. Ford

Today’s therapy session will be off the record.
There will be nothing to interpret.
No scenarios of what is or might be.
Nothing to analyze; except the photograph
Of the mountain peaks and the heavy clouds
Heaving themselves against the native skies.
We’ll discuss how the soft winter light
Glides as smoothly as oil
Above the timberline and the shadows
Leaving traces on the brazen plains.
How still everything is and how thin the pockets of air are.
The trees with their stark pencil branches
Leaving sketch marks across the valley below.
We’ll wonder about the snow descending (ever so slowly)
Like yesterday’s pain blanketing and wrapping itself
Around the troubled heart and mind.
Perhaps, today we’ll learn something new.
Solve some problem hidden in the darkroom.
Photographic paper emerging from the tray of chemicals,
Erasing the deepest darkness as it ascends upwards,
Thundering, Spirit-fire flashing across the horizon.

Watching Grant
Tom Miller Juvik

From the moment that the Baumgartners moved to the cul-de-sac at the end of Conifer Park Drive, watching Grant proved to be a necessity. As Will “Baumie” Baumgartner backed the U-Haul into the driveway, he could see Grant sitting on the roof of the house across the street, a nine-year-old BB-gun sniper with red hair and freckles. more

Bronwyn E. Haynes and Paul R. Wellons

2008-02-22T11:09:00.006-05:00

On Sorrow
Bronwyn E. Haynes

How does one write sorrow?
It is not exactly bar-napkin
or business-card material--
it is too deep, too wide,
to be written on such small surfaces.

It must be deep enough that if a reader
leaps in, there will be the sensation
of drowning--but once settled,
feet flat on the bottom,
it will be only neck-deep.

It must be heavy enough to imply
forever; to cause the reader
to contemplate how it would be
to carry this weight always,
but not so heavy that it cannot be moved.

Most importantly, it must breathe--
not as if it were vibrantly alive,
or as if it could fly away,
but instead as if it were dying.
It should flutter against the reader's palm

as if it might perish at any moment.

Give Me Fire
Paul R. Wellons

Like part of a macabre parade, Lance Corporal David Edge jogged behind a five-ton truck as it moved down a nameless Fallujah street. The truck spewed hot black smoke from its tailpipe and into Edge’s sweating face. more

Ken Valenti

2008-02-15T10:22:00.002-05:00

Stupid Ghosts
Ken Valenti

Emma Hazen had died of whooping cough in the 1850s, but still roamed the halls and rooms of the Sweet Rain Inn in Vermont.

So the story went.

“Emma won’t do any real harm,” the innkeeper, Carol, told Melissa and me. She pulled us two drafts of a local brew, Black Bear Lager. “She may hide your car keys. You may wake up to find your hair dryer going. Nothing serious.” (more)

2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize Winner Announced

2008-02-15T10:40:00.013-05:00

Barrie Kreinik has been selected as the 2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize winner by judge Patricia Smith.

Kreinik is a professional actor and singer who has performed in NYC and with the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. Kreinik graduated from Cornell University in 2007 with a B.A. in Theatre and English; while there, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Ink Magazine and her poetry was published in several campus journals. Her poems have also appeared in Artis Magazine. She is a native of Hartford, CT and currently resides in New York City.

The following were finalists for the prize:

Harry Bauld, "I Argue with Neruda Over You"

Linda M. Black, "Going North"

Carissa A. DiGiovanni, "Old Keys and Strangers"

Willa Granger, "And In New Jersey"

Shaine Latham, "Family Portraiture"

Rumit Pancholi, "The Pledge of Allegiance Heart Attack"

Marian Kaplun Shapiro, "Moving On"

Charles Toll, "Creative License"

The 2007-2008 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:

Chorus Call

Barrie Kreinik

This scratching is the worst: our cattish clawing
rips across narrow boxes
where we pack in fishlike, piled
on panes of wood. Our tremors echo higher
than the ceiling can support.
Primordial slime, rage simmers
under all this polished spit; we are
angry at the odds, but dead set on bludgeoning them
if it takes all day.

We're taught to crush each other into dust,
to drag our red nails over a milky face
then walk away from the blood and silk debris.
A kind one might toss a band-aid
over her shoulder. Usually we just smile
and hide the knife.

Those who preach hardness or spout challenge
from the safety of a cubicle or bench –
they know nothing of this sweat-stained room,
its corners.
Belongings strewn in heaps,
thick music books; piles of photos
now stacked on tables to be
sorted later, rejects labeled "SHRED."
Toes squeezed into shoes squeezed into hallways
hot with breath and emotive mumbles. Even
colors splash rudely – BVM blue
is in this season; black is the new last year.

We compete for attention down to our very socks.

At last, the clouds of chaos weave into queues; we paint ourselves
by number, stand and wait, or force square pegs
into circles to stay typed-in.
Once in the room (there are ifs involved),
you have about twenty seconds –
eight bars, four thank-yous, a double door,
and done. The previous victim sighs
as the next inhales.

What can they tell of us in twenty seconds?
They say, try to see it from our side
of the table; try to imagine
you're there to save the day.

But all that remains are shards:
a broken chair,
an echo
and a rainbow on the floor.

Patrick Carrington and Donna Moss

2008-02-08T11:32:00.000-05:00

A Different Day’s Light
Patrick Carrington

I have soaked you in and I hold you,
like the wood of an old house
holds its carpenter’s sweat.
You built me

in the shadows of a different
day’s light, stained my
deepest grain. But I no longer feel
the work of your hands. Forgive

me for forgetting
the joinings,
the glue and pressing of thumbs,

for allowing your craft to rot
like salty wreckage spit
from a sea. I can’t find you

in me even as I creak, even
as I leak from windows
watching days I can’t unsee.

Signs and Messages
by Donna Moss

I’m hiding in the closet at my parents’ house. Crouched beneath my hanging pants and beside an open suitcase. There’s banging on the front door. (more)

Fredrick Zydek and Kathleen J. Stowe

2008-02-01T12:37:00.000-05:00

Old Blind Charlie
Fredrick Zydek

How many years he lived there,
nobody really knew. Since
all the men on the block were
children was the suggestion.
And no one understood why he
only spoke to the delivery clerk
who brought groceries to his
door, or why he ordered them
by mailing lists to the store.
Children call him crushing names,
and rumor had it that his wife
died of syphilis he brought home
after the war. The woman who
cleaned for him on Thursdays
claimed he left her salary in a
dish on the kitchen counter and
sat on the front porch until she
finished and left by the back.
She claimed the walls were filled
with framed photos of his wife,
she knew he could not see.
Except for the music we heard
coming from his piano each day,
no sound came from the house.
He played but one piece of music,
a tune called Dear Old Girl.

Out of the Rain
by Kathleen J. Stowe

Anne waited. She sat hunched over on the top step of the front stoop with the border collie, Mischa, pressed against her left side, the gray-striped alley cat, Dexter, huddled next to her right thigh. (more)

On Campus Reading

2008-01-25T12:15:00.001-05:00

Date: Monday, February 4th.
Time: 6:00 pm.
Place: Powers 29.

Opening readers will be Serah Carter and Leah Guilmette.

Featured reader will be Jenn Monroe.

Call for CCNE Annual & Blog Hiatus

2007-12-12T14:40:00.000-05:00

Call for CCNE Student Work

Chester College of New England will publish the best student work from the 2007-2008 academic year. This inaugural issue will be available in May 2008 and will feature both literature and visual art. Students in the spring Small Press Publishing course will select the majority of the work, but College faculty also will nominate and choose pieces they believe "the best" of the year.

SUBMISSON GUIDELINES
Eligible work must have been created by a current Chester College of New England student at some point during the 2007-2008 academic year (August 2007-February 2008). The work does not have to be the result of a class assignment.

Literature submissions
We will accept submissions of poetry (up to 3 poems), fiction (up to 3,000 words) and non-fiction (up to 3,000 words). Please include your name, class year, campus address, and email address. Send work to Compass Rose c/o Prof. Jenn Monroe via on-campus mail. We will not return submissions so DO NOT send us your only copy. Deadline: February 1, 2008

Visual art submissions
Please submit visual art work as high resolution images (up to 3 pieces) on a CD. DO NOT submit originals. Send CDs to Compass Rose c/o Prof. Jenn Monroe via on-campus mail. Deadline: February 1, 2008

Compass Rose Blog on Hiatus
The Compass Rose blog will be on a holiday hiatus until January. Watch for new features and the 2007 Parnell Poetry Prize winner!

Chester College Senior Show, Closing of Submissions Period

2007-12-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

Chester College Senior Show

Chester College of New England is showcasing work by its December 2007 graduates in the second of two, week-long shows

From December 3 to 9 the gallery will feature the work of Kerri Aines, Andrew Marshall, and Leah Reynolds. An opening reception will be held at 6 pm, Wednesday, December 5.

Submissions for the 2007-08 Compass Rose Closed

See Submissions page for more information.

Chester College Senior Shows, Henry Horenstein

2007-11-28T14:52:00.000-05:00

Chester College Seniors Show Work

Chester College of New England will showcase work by its December 2007 graduates in two, week-long shows.

Work by artists Mike Durkee, Jesse Jaremczak, and Shannon Sopha, will be featured in the Wadleigh Gallery November 26 to December 2 with an opening reception at 6 p.m., Wednesday, November 28. The reception also will feature a reading by Mark Cugini at 7 pm.

From December 3 to 9 the gallery will feature the work of Kerri Aines, Andrew Marshall, and Leah Reynolds. An opening reception will be held on at 6 pm, Wednesday, December 5.

4 December - Henry Horenstein
Photography

On December 4 at 2:30 pm, Henry Horenstein will give a public lecture in the conference room of Chester College of New England's Wadleigh Library. Horenstein is a visiting artist, the last this year of the college's Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Henry Horenstein has worked as a photographer, teacher, and author since the early 1970s. He is author of over 30 books, including many monographs (Honky Tonk, Humans, Creatures, Aquatics, Canine, Racing Days) and classic textbooks (Black & White Photography, Beyond Basic Photography, Color Photography, Photography with Russell Hart). His newest book Close Relations was recently published by powerHouse Books; it’s a collection of photographs he made as a student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind’s at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the early 1970s. Henry's photographs have been exhibited internationally and are part of many important museum and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the International Museum of Photography. He currently lives in Boston where he continues to photograph, exhibit, publish, and teach at RISD, where he is professor of photography.

Compass Rose interviews Henry Horenstein

Compass Rose: How did you decide what to photograph for you next book?

Henry Horenstein: I met some Burlesque performers and got chatting with them and one of them asked to have her picture taken while performing. I took her pictures and realized that I really liked photographing them so I kept doing it and expanded my subject to drag and performance in general.

CR: Who has been the most influential artist in your work?

Horenstein: A few documentary photographers--Vianargis, Wigi, Ray, Vanderelskin and Robert Franks to name a few.

CR: If you weren’t a photographer what would you be doing now?

Horenstein: I would want to be a musician if I had any talent [laughs]. I think I would be a history teacher because I study German history. (more)

Jesseca Ferguson

2007-11-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

November 27 - Jesseca Ferguson
Photographic Artist

On November 27 at 2:30 p.m., Jesseca Ferguson will give a public lecture in the conference room of Chester College of New England's Wadleigh Library. Ferguson is a visiting artist, part of the college's Visiting Artists Lecture Series.

Ferguson co-curated Made in Poland: Contemporary Pinhole Photography for the Main Gallery of the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, January 29 – March 4, 2007. She received grants from the LEF Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Fort Point Arts Community, Inc., and the Navigator Foundation to produce a bilingual catalogue and to bring all seven of the Polish artists to Boston for a week of cultural and artistic exchange (January 29 – February 6, 2007). The exhibition traveled to other venues in Massachusetts before the work was returned to the artists in Poland. Ferguson has been invited to Poland to meet with students from the Fine Arts Academy of Poznan in July.

Gallery Show and Eva Sutton

2007-11-07T14:36:00.000-05:00

7 November - Robert O'Connor and Robert daVies Show at Chester College

The Wadleigh Gallery is pleased to announce two concurrent shows
featuring work by Robert O'Connor and Robert daVies.

The shows will run from November 7 through the rest of the month.

Robert O'Connor works in painting, performance, and video to
investigate issues of difference, discomfort, and despair. O'Connor
often feels overwhelmed with the constant stream of violence and
despair in the world, yet sees beauty in the futility of making a
difference. In addition to installing work, O'Connor will be
collaboratively producing a video installation piece with Chester
College students.

Rope-a-Dope Collaborative was founded in 2007 by painter Robert
daVies and poet Mary Walker Graham to foster collaborations between
artists, writers, and their communities. Through the vehicle of
handmade books, Rope-a-Dope brings together diverse communities in
projects which simultaneously focus on art, literature, literacy,
economics and the environment. We are inspired by the wit and courage
of boxer Muhammed Ali, who was as fearless in the ring as he is
unafraid to address social issues outside of it. Ali spontaneously
created the shortest poem in the English language when asked by a
group of students, "Give us a poem!" Ali replied, "Me, we."

13 November - Eva Sutton
Photographer and Installation Artist

On November 13 at 2:30 pm, Eva Sutton will give a public lecture in the conference room of Chester College of New England's Wadleigh Library. Sutton is a visiting artist, part of the college's Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Eva Sutton is a photographer and installation artist. Her current work explores the boundary between static images and interactive databases in which users change the visual state of the system. Before becoming an artist, Eva was a software engineer working primarily in the fields of biotechnology and large-scale database management. Her work has been featured at Aperture, SF Camerawork (San Francisco) Exit Art (New York), The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Tang Museum, The National Center of Photography in Paris, SIGGRAPH, and the on-line sites Digital Imaging Forum (www.art.uh.edu/dif), www.genomicart.org and www.pbs.org. She has lectured on issues in art and technology at Princeton, New York University, The Cooper Union, the Hong Kong Center for the Arts and the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, Cuba. Currently, Eva is serving as Chair of the Photography Department at the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in New York City.

Compass Rose interviews Eva Sutton

Compass Rose: The role of identity awareness seems to be a reoccurring theme in your work, especially in Hybrids and Dossier 21b. How do you see that concept adding to your art, and why do you think you are so drawn to it?

Eva Sutton: Identity, whether in the biological, psychological or social sense is something that always seems to be profoundly important to us as human beings. The question, “Who am I?” or, in the broader sense, “Who are we?” is fundamental to human existence and it always will be. For me, it’s a very rich place to make work, conceptually speaking.

CR: What are your views on identity re-creation such as cosmetic surgery? What do you feel is the perceived need for such a change?

Sutton: I suppose that all surgery that is strictly cosmetic has to do with conformity to some social norm of what is beautiful or acceptable. Although I’d rather see social norms being redefined to include broader definitions of beauty, I don’t think its reprehensible to “fix’ something that makes you unhappy about your appearance, as long as it doesn’t become an addiction. Its important to realize though, that having a nose job or liposuction can’t really “change your life.” It’s only a surface fix and one has to be clear about that.

CR: What first drew your interest in molecular biology and genetic engineering?

Sutton: I have a science background, specifically as a software engineer. But even before becoming a programmer, I was always interested in science and the scientific method, partly because I come from a medical family where science was part of the daily discourse. I briefly worked with a group of electrical engineers designing systems for genetic analysis that also helped spark a deep interest in genetics and microbiology. (more)