Enter 135 — 13′s from The Pedestal Project
Today I’m finally starting to post what I’ve decided to call “13′s from The Pedestal Project,” by which I mean my favorites of those submissions to John M. Bennett’s and my gallery of visio-textual art at The Pedestal. I call them “13′s” because the people who created them were, so to speak, all–in my opinion–tied for thirteenth place in the competition for the twelve spots available in the gallery.
The first piece is “Fifth Grade,” by Connie Tettenborn:
When I saw this, I was biased toward it because so many of the other submissions to a gallery supposed to be of visual poetry was (tediously) not visual poetry by any reasonable definition, and this was. I was also charmed by its evocation of what fifth grade seemed to me. I found the choice of data the kids were being bombarded with interesting, too: it happened to include three pieces of knowledge of extreme importance to me all my life: the discovery of America (and I claim Columbus discovered America; Eric the Red or his son, whoever it was, who got to Newfoundland only extended the shoreline of Europe), long division and the planets (which in fifth grade were just about equal to dinosaurs and the Pyramids to me).
I liked the little kids in proper order–although I’m not sure why Connie uses the particular letter she does to represent them. Wait, they are, I now see, “e.g.’s” . . . I’m still not getting the connection . In any case, one of the kids seems not paying full attention, which is a nice touch. The idea of Knowledge coming in from some Afar that seems almost divine intrigued me, too. There’s the concept of a window into understanding, too.
In chatting over syberspace with Connie, I’ve learned that she is new to visual poetry, so deserving of special praise for doing so well to being with. Because she asked for help, I’m now going to say a few minor negative things about “Fifth Grade.” One is that I’m not sure “bah bah” fits the piece as well as “blah blah” would have, and I think “gaga” and “lala” not particularly effective. I think the choice of varied fonts good, but believe a little more could have done to the in-flow–for instance, some overlapping could have worked nicely, I think, and great difference in the size of letters.
I wondered about the use of color, finally deciding straight monochromatic, facts-only dry knowledge worked best. But use of colr and visual imagery might be something to try, too, if the artist wanted to make a sequence of variations on a theme, which her piece would be a good start to.
Thanks for the feedback, Bob. FYI, the letters representing the students are “e a r.” They can only be seen if one clicks on the image to enlarge it to the full screen size. I agree that “blah, blah” is better than “bah.” Too bad I did not think of how to represent the nasally sounding “Wanhh” of the teachers in Charles Shultz’s “Peanuts” movies!
Ah, “ear” makes sense, and an e does look like an ear. Not sure I like it, though–to literal. But I can’t think of a good alternative.