Art & Poetry

For a class assignment, I had to go to the Art Museum and find a piece of art that inspired me, stare at it for forty five minutes, and then write a poem about it. I was really dreading this assignment until my mom volunteered to go with me. It was a blast! The most stressful part was finding parking, and my mom's a dork because when we went into the parking garage she'd scoot down in her seat as if that would make the car smaller as well.

First we hit up the gift shop. The gift shop is a necessary part of any adventure. There were so many beautiful doodads and gizmos in there. I found a beautiful mermaid notebook that made me want to work on my mermaid story, but it was expensive! At one point we were looking at scarves that were $85. Naturally that's when I knocked over the mannequin it was displayed on. We quickly got out of there, not feeling fancy enough to look. Or rich enough. Man.

Since we didn't have all day, we glanced at the Western art then went straight to the modern/contemporary. Immediately I was drawn to a picture. I would say painting, but it wasn't a painting. It was over six feet of very detailed art done with… Crayon. Crayon! I couldn't believe it! It turned out that there were more and they were all part of a series entitled "Epic" by Joseph Stashkevetch.

Fragility of Order

Memory Palace

Ask the Dust

Beautiful Fall

Abyss

Obsolete

Massacre of Innocents

And they were truly Epic! Each one was as bout six to eight feet tall. Look at the detail! He did that with crayons! If you want to get a better sense of how but the pictures are, go HERE. They were truly amazing and inspired me! My mom and I stared at them for a good while and noticed that things from one picture appeared in another, until we'd connected almost all of them together. The background of Massacre of Innocents looks like Ask the Dust. The walls of A Beautiful Fall look like the Abyss. There's a statue from Memory Palace, motorcycle parts from Obsolete, and a hidden bird feather in A Beautiful Fall as well. The only one we couldn't connect was Fragility of Order. But that's still a cool picture! 

So, after all that staring and a fun time with my mom, here's the poem I got out of it. This is just a first draft and definitely needs some work, but here it is! 

Epic

By Kylee Wiechman

Dying fish, the birds last words

Massacre of the Innocents

Angels pointing straight at Memory

To their comrade across the hall

Broken with airless rubber, ivy, roses

The leg nobody needed anyways

Hidden bird feathers at the edge of the

Abyss

Ask the Dust when crumbling stone

So precise, perfect windows and stairs to

Heaven met oil, filling gills with

Final breath, forgotten at the end of the

Checkerboard, one last light left on for no one

Palace made of crayon wax and

Fragility of order

Gear shifts next to Muses next to

Emptiness, vast, defiant, rich

A Beautiful Fall

Once full, their eyes now

Obsolete