AFTER YOUR EYES FINISH PLAYING WITH MOI WINGS

Go read Ron on Moi.

This was unexpected. But, Maraming Salamat, Ron. Thank you.

And as I write this, there are four comments on Ron's blog. Steeped as I currently am in Dante's Purgatorio, I feel like I'm on the edge of seeing a translation of purgatory beginning to play itself out there. I hope not (and thank you, Steven Fama!). But if the comment section imp-lodes, then as many of us know, 'twould be no surprise.

But enough about me (wink). I really got online to post a post entitled

"AN EYE FOR THE UNTRODDEN PATH"

If you read this new article on Eve Aschheim over at Princeton University News, you might glean why I am so happy to have had a chance to use one of her images as a book cover.

Check out this excerpt and you'll see a restlessness and striving that I admire--manifested in the latter part of the excerpt below about her collaborations with mathematician John Cowan (the result is my cover image in PUNCTUATIONS) and photographer Emmet Gowin. I like the multidisciplinary approach in the arts -- in poetry, it can result in poems that are trans-writing.

Poetic trans-writings -- What am I talking about? Moi again, obviously, when, truly-- I mean to point your attention to Eve Aschheim; here's the excerpt but do go read the entire interview--there's much here that I consider poetics:

*excerpt*
Her work, which tends to be done on small canvases, uses abstract shapes to build complex relationships and structures. "I want to create a composition that is open, where the viewer can imagine," Aschheim said.

"The relation between her hand's irregular gestures and the blank ground upon which she chooses to make them creates an almost musical harmony, where sounds and pauses are of equal importance to the whole," wrote curator Regina Coppola in an essay accompanying an exhibition called "Eve Aschheim: Recent Work," shown in 2003 at the University Gallery at the Fine Arts Center at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. "Some works are dynamically dense with a torrent of dashes or layers of superimposed angles and lines, while others contain no more than a handful of delicate ellipses that balance each other with rhythmic undertones of stillness."

Aschheim works in a studio in Manhattan with a view of the Hudson River. Being in New York keeps her in touch with what's going on in the art world. When she's in Princeton, she relishes having "time and space to think," she said. She also cherishes contact with her colleagues at the University, both in the visual arts program and beyond it. A few years ago she paid a visit to John Conway, the John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics.

"I told him I wanted to learn about mathematics," she said. "I was hoping I could learn to think in different ways about space and geometry."

Conway was eager to share his knowledge, and later came to one of Aschheim's classes to talk to her students about hyperbolic space and geometry, making sketches for the students.

Aschheim has pushed the boundaries of her work in recent years by experimenting with a new medium, thanks to a collaboration with professor of visual arts Emmet Gowin, a photographer.

"He saw my drawings and suggested we try to make photograms," Aschheim said. Working in a photography studio at 185 Nassau St., the two took several of Aschheim's drawings on mylar, laid them on photo paper, exposed them to the light and developed the photos. Marks that Aschheim had erased from her drawings during the creative process were now visible. For Aschheim, the photograms were a way to see where she's been and where she's going — and to examine how she got there.

"You can see how the drawing was made," Aschheim said. "All this hidden information comes out."

In the classroom, Aschheim helps students explore new ground and examine their own work in fresh ways. She has an "eye for untrodden paths," Ogunbiyi said.

"She pushed us to expand our art perspective, and encouraged us to explore a range of drawing mediums and discover new ways of expressing our work," said Veneka Chagwedera, who will be a sophomore this year.