I Love My Love

kikikikismith:

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I Love My Love is a ballad by Helen Adam that was illustrated by Kiki Smith. Kalamazoo College is fortunate enough to have an edition of it in their Rare Books collection. The piece is an accordion fold book with eighteen panels, all of which are illustrated with original scans of Kiki Smith’s own hair, which is quite distinctive. The book was published in 2009 and is akin to her later work, which celebrates the lives of women in folklore and myth. Helen Adam’s ballad is based on a traditional celtic folk story with a somewhat medusa-esque theme. In the tale, a bride-groom murders his lover, whose hair continues to haunt him. 

Jenny HOLZER, ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED, 2015, Grey granite stone engraved with text. , Selection from Truisms, 1977-7928 x 33 x 25 cm (11.02 x 12.99 x 9.84 in)

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Gillian Wearing, Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say, 1992–3

POEM

My hayseed harlequin
what’s a bloomer to you

and a bobbin to him?
Two grams of Melatonin

won’t put the bitch to bed.
—She’s mazing in bloody pastures.

—She’s got a equinox in the head.
Five six seven eight nine

black angels—ten twelve
fourteen eighteen fare-thee-wells—

won’t scrub the slate to static—
won’t turn the tone to knell—

kneaded and seeded and gadgeted, well,
it’s a why-you-dunnit

and a heck and a hell
and a moon-stung stutter

and a hazy hotel
when a kiss is a vanish

and a flown is a fell.

–Karen Volkman