Alan Fine art. Photos by Tiffany Edwards Hunt. All rights reserved. Use with permission only.
I was on Kaua’i this past weekend when I had the thrill of picking up a copy of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Sunday (for $3 at the Whaler’s General Store in Anahola) to find my name in print on page G7. (Find it online here.) This was the first time my byline appeared in that statewide newspaper, thus, the “special to the Star-Advertiser” reference. I feel like this is a personal career goal accomplished and I sincerely hope for more freelance assignments from the Star-Advertiser. Check out my article about the Observation Inspiration exhibit at the Volcano Art Center or, better yet, go check out the exhibit that runs through Feb. 19. The story that appeared in the Star-Advertiser was edited for length and for the fact that it focused on the visual artists that are featured in the exhibit. For the story, I also interviewed storyteller and poet Kimberly Dark and I’d like to share that part of the story that didn’t make it to print.
That follows, along with links for the websites of the artists I interviewed.
Tim Freeman's pit-fired vessels
Kimberly Dark
… While Kimberly Dark teaches an online sociology course in Southern California, she travels the country to colleges, universities, theaters and festivals to engage in storytelling.
“I’ve been a writer for a long time,” Dark said. “It has taken different forms at different times in my life. This thing I do now, I’m a story teller primarily. I use everyday life to get at emotion in cultural critique. An easier way to say it, I help people talk about things they don’t think they want to talk about. I use humor and intimacy.”
For the Observation Inspiration exhibit, Dark submitted a couple of pieces of poetry in honor of the Goddess of Volcanoes.
”Each time I visit her she takes a piece of my flesh, and I grow new. Sometimes I think my foolish thoughts, ‘ I don’t like to be spoiled by scratches, cuts and bruises.’ Somehow there seems a virtue in keeping nice. She reminds me that I am made to be torn down, my pride to be shredded, my false safety to be gauged, blind and washed away in the tide. There is nothing to protect, no virtue in niceness. Pele and the laughing sea make jokes of my protections, perfections, possessions of flesh, she reminds me that I heal, get new skin, become new, and that beauty is in the living” are lines from “Pele,” a poem she wrote “to the mother of land” in 2004, not too long after moving to Puna from San Diego.
“Each one among us has the warm hand of Pele holding the egg that carries beloved Hi’iaka” is a line from another poem Dark prepared especially for the Observation Inspiration exhibit. “We choose how to use the power we possess, quotidian or far reaching, our strength is significant.”
Dark recited her poetry in true storyteller fashion, with dramatic enunciation and pausing to spellbind, at the opening night of the Observation Inspiration exhibit earlier this month.
When asked to contribute to Observation Inspiration, Dark noted her initial “mixed feelings,” given the “common western disregard for indigenous culture and impact on the land.”
Having given it some thought and noted that the 100-year anniversary is about the volcano observatory specifically, she realized that Observation Inspiration is “far more broadly interpretable.”
For Dark, nature and mythology poetry is not her standard. “A lot of what I do is storytelling about social life. But Pele is a vital theme here. There is no getting around that. So, it feels very natural…”
www.kimberlydark.com
Alan Fine: alanfineart.com
Tim Freeman: tfreeman.net/Ceramics/Welcome.html
