Taking a Moment to Enage with Art

Two bodies pressing against one another, grabbing hold of their clothes, and resting their heads together. This painting’s background is screaming with colors: pink, white, purple, yellow, green, blue, and brown. At first glance, I thought this piece was possibly a Madonna and child painting. The elegance of the woman, her eyes steadily watching me, felt like a raw declaration of something. The second person, their face covered with a drape as if they service a bigger purpose than to show facial expressions, is clinging to the woman. The closer I looked the less it became about mother and child, and more about intimacy. Élan editions are about intimacy with writing and art.

The vibrant lines of color are formed into straight lines, bar almost, and with only two holding back the people in the painting by their shoulders. The lines could’ve gone through their faces, or their necks, but the fact that they overlap their shoulders feels protective. I think of being captivated, blocked by something else. I’m a believer that sometimes not writing can leave a person blocked, but reading can trap someone in another word. Sometimes when I read poetry I don’t even feel like a human being, I don’t realize my brain is processing literature or that I’m reading the words right off of someone else’s thoughts. I think sometimes we forget that when we read someone else’s work – poetry or fiction or nonfiction – and look at someone’s visual art, we are literally peering into someone else’s heart and I think that’s beautiful.

The woman’s body, who I originally believed was a version of the Madonna, is full of swirls. Her twists and spirals even inch onto her wardrobe, continuing in her hair and under her chin. The person hidden next to her has no swirls. She’s painted with splashes of paint, bright and almost angry looking and it makes me think that perhaps her love is not only blind but raw too – hence the title piece Young Love. This person, blinded by the blue drapes, is also another shade of the clothing they wear. Maybe this is a stretch but the blues could symbolize love can feel blue sometimes – the blindness of love affairs.

Pieces that make me think are my favorite and just looking at the painting for one minute made me think of so many different intents. Are they being held back by love? Is the theme intimacy or sorrow? What are the woman’s eyes saying? Are they hugging each other or not? Just like the written pieces in each Élan edition, the artwork is also chosen with the intent of intimating the minds of our readers and pushing them to want to understand. To me, Élan means engaging the brain and this single art piece did that for me. This piece represents Élan with its colors and endless possibilities of interpretation. It invokes my interest just like each art piece in this book.

– Valerie Busto, Creative Non-Fiction/Fiction Editor

Grounding Myself in Art

Whenever I feel like I have come to a point where I have “run out” of things, ideas, themes, I turn to visual art to try and find inspiration. I do this thing where I am constantly writing about myself and what is happening in my life and, in turn, feel as if I am continuously writing about the same things over and over again in the same exact ways with the same exact language. It feels like I am stuck in my own writing.

Going to visual art allows me to disconnect my personal life from my writing and take on the voice of the subject or artist or to interact with something other than myself in my writing. I will write pieces that I would have never thought about writing or even thought of in general because of pulling my inspiration from something else, something intended to make the consumer feel some sort of visceral reaction.

Both writing and visual art make their consumers think and go further into each piece than what is first seen. It’s amazing. I can look at the same piece of art endlessly, but still continue to find something else about the it. There is always more.

Élan takes both art and writing and uses them so that a kind of symbiotic relationship occurs within the book itself. There is writing that has to do with the art and art that has to do with the writing. Each feed off the other.

In the 2017 Fall edition, an art piece titled, Fruit on Wheels III, is one that I find myself going back to consistently and doing nothing more than just looking at it and trying to piece together a semblance of the story of what is happening in it. Who are the two men? What are they doing? Where is it? Why was the artist drawn to capturing this moment in time? What did the artist want people to get out of it?

In all honesty, I am not entirely sure as to why I am drawn to this piece. There’s a story or something deeper lying in every piece of artwork, and I will most likely never truly know what the artist intended to say with this piece, but I can piece together what the art is telling me.

It tells me anguish and hard work and determination and exasperation and aspiration and just-getting-by and this-is-life-and-it-is-okay. I think it is partly because I am who I am and that I write what I write. I don’t do super crazy fiction stories or fantasy or abstract. I do grounded and realistic and in your face and there is more to what I am saying. That’s what I felt from this artwork. On the surface, you understand what is most likely happening, but you keep going further and further into the work itself and the smallest aspect of the art means something.

Writing from this piece would be me removing myself in the sense that maybe it isn’t a personal narrative that I am telling, but instead, someone else’s narrative that I am telling with personal conviction and connection.

– Winnie Blay, Junior Managing Editor

Creating from Nothing

Whenever my eyes used to come across “Milkmaid” by Eryka Goldsworthy, it struck a familiar chord. I’d find myself staring at all aspects of the painting, the way the wood contains small looped circles and the bread reflects the light coming from the window. I believe that this painting resonated with me because it focused on a small action, something simple, a snapshot of milkmaid. The inspiration for this painting had to have come from the oil painting by a Dutch artist in 1658, also called “The Milkmaid”. The biggest differences between the two paintings is notably the setting. The painting done by Eryka is much more modern, the milkmaid is pouring milk in ceramic bowl on the edge of a stainless-steel sink.

            From the hues to the Milkmaid’s expression, there is no question that the painting is organic. It illustrates an overall feeling of home coming from a creator. I believe that any entrepreneur, cook, farmer, writer, painter, can relate to feeling radiated by the painting. Writing takes places first in the home and when I look back at my earliest memories, some of my writing took place while watching my mother cook in the kitchen. Paintings like “Milkmaid” exhibit a feeling grounded in the roots of any culture. Writing involves reaching into memories to explore more about oneself, whether it was a good or bad period in our life. It is a good feeling to know that the emotions behind a piece are true, and they can be true to anyone.

One of my poems describes how I used to watch my family work at the back of a restaurant, elbow grease and all. I think that “Milkmaid” resonated because it reminded me of an actual memory at a very young age. Paintings that take me back to a certain point in life inspire me to create something from nothing. Personally, “nothing” is a state of mind or a plateau for an artist.  Creating something out of nothing is when my best ideas take place. Last year, “Milkmaid” pulled me out of a plateau with writing that I was going through and inspired me to create a creative nonfiction story about the milkmaids of Colombia. I have found myself always writing about small actions in my daily life, mostly because it amazes me how differently I can experience them.

The Elan literary magazine publishes nothing but organic work. Our paintings like “Milkmaid” exhibit a profound candid expression. The action of the milkmaid is a lot similar to other pieces that Elan publishes, it makes writers like myself reflect on a memory to create something memorable.

– Evelyn Alfonso, Poetry Editor