By Menachem Wecker
The half a dozen public school students seated around a table in the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery on June 15 had been tasked with composing original poetry based on the exhibit of paintings by Irish-born painter Sean Scully.
The young poets were part of a group of about 20 students from the SEED Public Charter School of Washington, Luther Jackson Middle School (Falls Church, Va.), Academies at Anacostia (Washington, D.C.) and Annandale High School (Annandale, Va.) that came to GW for a poetry workshop. The workshop was the inaugural event of D.C. Miscellanea, a collaboration between GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the SEED Public Charter School.
The students split into four teams to work with professional poets -- Elizabeth Acevedo, Holly Bass, R. Dwayne Betts and Derrick Weston Brown – to compose poems. They then came together as a group to read their poems and then had lunch at the Multicultural Student Services Center.
Ms. Acevedo, B.A. ’10, who was coaching the group in the Brady Gallery, shared remarks Mr. Scully had made about his works and process and asked the students to frame their poems using four statements: “It’s all about the edges,” “To be a creator you have to be an idiot,” “Art comes from need” and “What do you see?”
Lenore Miller, M.F.A. ’72, director of university art galleries and chief curator, told the students that the reoccurring rectangular forms in Mr. Scully’s works evoked stacked books.
Students saw a variety of other things in Mr. Scully’s forms and colors from bacon to coffee. “It’s kind of cool that you can see so many things,” Ms. Acevedo told them.
Ms. Acevedo also composed her own poem, in which she identified chessboard patterning in the works, and a palette that featured tar- and coal-colors. “What does an artist mean?” Ms. Acevedo read from her notepad. “We create entire things that someone can walk into.”
Student poems suggested a variety of other aspects to Mr. Scully’s works, from towels, spiders and quilts to walls of fire and chaos. “Was there a thought process involved,” one student wondered aloud, “or were they just painting?”
A student noted that the abstract paintings blur when one squints, and they reappear when one closes one’s eyes. Ms. Acevedo praised the student’s unexpected observation – that something could be seen through closed eyes.
Another student saw prison bars in Mr. Scully’s paintings. “I want to be the piece that doesn’t fit,” she said.
Ms. Miller told the student that Mr. Scully had intended there to be a sort of violence in the works. “He was fighting what he calls the ‘tyranny of the grid,’” she said.
When all the students gathered together to read their poems in a larger room in the Media and Public Affairs Building, Brian Casemore, assistant professor of curriculum and pedagogy, said collaborations like the poetry workshop are a university priority.
“President Knapp has been thinking with the community about the role of humanities in the academy,” he said.
Dr. Casemore, who co-founded D.C. Miscellanea with Topher Kandik, M.Ed. ’08, creative writing club coordinator at the SEED Public Charter School, publicly recognized the efforts of his doctoral student Ami Turner and John Ralls, special advisor for communications and outreach in GW’s Division of Operations, in organizing the event.
“John Ralls is sort of a miracle worker in bringing people together,” he said.
The teachers from the three other schools that came to the workshop also have GW ties. Gina Corneille is a master’s candidate at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and the other two teachers, Samantha Spinney, M.Ed. ’08, and Heather Jordan, M.Ed. ’10, are alumni.
In an interview, Dr. Casemore said he received a grant from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development last spring to partner with Mr. Kandik and to establish D.C. Miscellanea.
“The poetry conference brought together D.C. area youth and established writers to learn about the craft of writing and to share their writing with each other and the community,” he said. “With writing projects that center on the arts and aesthetic experiences, GW supports the leadership potential of D.C. area youth, encouraging them to shape a vision of community through writing and the arts.”