Stranger/Procession

On Friday the Out of the Blue Gallery is hosting the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library Art Exchange show! The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library invited five artists to create five pieces of art of existing MJEML songs and the MJEML made five songs from existing pieces of their work. I chose the song "Stranger" and created this piece! :)

I picked this song because I really, really love the lyrics and could really go off into my "world" I've been creating with my ink pen. It was a favorite for playlists and mix cds when I was invited to participate in this project and I had already coined imagery around it, as I do when I listen to music on the way to work in the morning. ;)

I specifically developed imagery from the lyrics "Sometimes I whisper just to make you feel alone / Sometimes I run away for the rush of coming home Sometimes they ask me why I let you slip away / When they can't think of nothing, nothing else to say." I tried to capture the loneliness and tenderness of the song with ghosts and skeletons juxtaposed with glowing, plush bird ladies dispelling thoughts on the temperance of life in a dark forest.

I made a little video of the inking and coloring process set to the song. My cats were pretty excited about me drawing apparently and interrupted the process multiple times. :) I'm really excited by how this piece turned out, I feel like I've leveled up in creating interesting color schemes which is something I've been working to improve on.

In exchange for creating an art piece, the Michael J. Memorial Library created a song around my piece "The Procession" and they documented their process in this video. I love, love, love the story they developed around my piece through the lyrics and music: a war where the lady deer have massacred all the male deer and the procession of the females after. There's a wonderful eery and airy quality to the song which is told with three voices: the main centaur, her lady fawns and the males.

The show takes place this Friday at 9pm at the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge. There will be a live performance of the song, a show of the work and free cds with booklets!

Read more about the project through the MJEML blog here and read the MJEML post for "The Procession" here.