art from art

This weekend I visited the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art on the SUNY New Paltz campus.

One of the exhibitions was titled "Reading Objects 2008" in which writers on campus were allowed to select artwork from the museum's collection so that they might compose poetry, songs, essays, and other responses to the work; thus creating new art from old. It was an intriguing and successful venture.

The idea of "captioning" artwork or any visual material works great with young writers who sometimes plead "no idea" for a writing assignment. A pile of National Geographic magazines provides a trove of images for haiku practice, story-telling, and essays.