The Process & Bios

Notes on "the love of the fish"
by Claudia Grace and Ron Kostar
                

I was excited by the prospect of exploring possibilities in Ron’s proposal of working on a synergetic piece for BluePrint Review. I ultimately chose the option of selecting a Kostar collage which would both galvanize and expand the meaning of one of my poems. After reviewing Ron’s portfolio, I sent him three poems from which to chose. Each of these manifests a transcendental and transformational quality which is fundamental to my work. Ron chose the love of the fish.

I dove into the portfolio searching for images which resonated with the poem on its myriad levels. Three Kostar collages appeared to create a multi-dimensional conversation with my poem. Ron chose the collage I consider most playful in articulating the undertones and movement which the poem suggests. The “cellular” motifs in the collage amplify the synergy of the environment and the release from boundaries into a synaesthetic One.

- Claudia

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Upon receiving and reading Claudia's three poems, I chose the shortest of the three, the love of the fish, because of its subject matter and its concentrated intelligence. Claudia's poem is at once simple and dense, and its images produce a rapid surface activity and a loving excitement that I often try to capture automatically (without thinking) in my collages. That her poem's central image is that of two fish also reverberated strongly with me since many of my works are inspired by and refer to water and the life forms and activity around it. I was also struck by how the ideas and cosmic activity conveyed by this particular poem, as it moves away from the initial fish image, echo and amplify what I try to produce in many of my collages through colors and dynamic lines and shapes. The match of these two pieces, therefore, seemed natural and expansive.

- Ron Kostar

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"the love of fish" was previously published in:
"The Other Side of Where I Used to Live", ACCESS PRESS, 2007

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