(Art Meets Poetry — and
Vice-Versa)
Keven Bellows and Martha Bardach
Illustration by Martha Bardach
 ALBUM OF ABSENCE
Endless images
of my mother's back
tense against the desk chair
rehearsing her bills, bent
at the sink, shoulders sloping
toward the scraped carrots,
freckles framed in satin
curved towards the center of the bed.
Always the map of her back,
also the edge
as she turns
three-quarters gone,
the space around her airless and flat
going dark from the turning point.
— Keven Bellows
Artist's Statement
I have been listening for many years to Keven
read her poetry, speak of her process writing poetry, and speak of
the creative pull of poetry as an essential route to understanding
important relationships. I have benefited immensely from this
ongoing conversation about writing as excavation and reconciliation.
A couple of years ago, during of period of turmoil, I had the chance
to show Keven a series of small artist's books I was creating to
deal with my personal difficulties. It was out of her appreciation
of my imagery and my long time appreciation of her words that the
collaboration evolved.
Keven gave me a copy of her manuscript, which I
read countless times in search of a launching point for my
contribution. We set a deadline. And still I wondered if I would
have something to give her. But upon reading the poems one more
time, three themes and three poetic lines jumped at me. The three
collages I made for the book seemingly assembled themselves after
that.
— Martha Bardach
Martha Bardach Was born in Los Angeles in 1943. During
childhood, she lived and traveled for long periods of time with her
family in Europe; she received exposure at a young age to important
elements of European culture, art, architecture, music, language,
cuisine, etc. She graduated from UC Berkeley and earned an
elementary teaching credential at UCLA. She worked several years in
NYC in the Time-Life Books division Library of Art. She
returned to Los Angeles in the late 60s, married and had one son. In
the late 70s she was a freelance photo researcher. Since the early
80s she has been the West Coast Photo editor for Time
Magazine. She has taken photography classes at Santa Monica College
and book arts classes at Otis College of Art and Design.
Keven Bellows See this issue's
In Review for a review of her book,
Taking Your Own True Name (with illustrations by Martha Bardach)
and a biographical note.
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