In the spring of 2010 Ratzlaff was a guest instructor for Randolph College’s Visiting Writers Program teaching a class on Ekphrastic poetry. “The purist definition would be a verbal or literary representation of a visual work. In textbook Ekphrastic poetry, the artwork and the poem relate one to one. The art and the poem have a fusion.”

Instead of this more restrictive view, Ratzlaff encourages his students to use the art as inspiration—“to use the still moment of the painting or photograph and give it voice or movement… a dialog that can be far ranging. Any time the arts talk to one another can be an Ekphrastic moment.”

Ratzlaff suggests that the first Ekphrastic poem new writers attempt should not be about art they love. He advises, instead, to choose something they are not sure of. “This is good advice for poetry in general,” he says. “If you are so sure about it, there is no discovery about the work or about yourself.”

Ratzlaff began writing poems as a child in his hometown of Henderson, Nebraska, on a typewriter his father brought home from the office. He once wrote a poem for each member of his family, which included five brothers and sisters, comparing each of them to a flower. However, it wasn’t until age twenty-five in graduate school that he began to think of himself as a writer.

Ratzlaff’s most significant experience with Ekphrastics came when he lived in England for a year. He was experiencing a serious writing block partly because his Midwestern voice didn’t match his surroundings. He walked into an exhibition of Paul Klee’s artwork and saw Klee doing something in his art that he wanted to do in his writing. Ratzlaff immediately began doodling verbal sketches of the Klee paintings right there in the gallery. Suddenly he was engaged in language in a new way. “One of the things Klee gave me was a frame to give voice to a particular thing. It was such a relief, because I had been blocked for two years.”

Ratzlaff picks up a copy of his book of poetry, Dubious Angels: Poems after Paul Klee, from his desktop and flips through drawings of angels by Klee. “They’re poignant.” He flips to another. “Grotesque,” he says. “Rude.”

When he was approached about teaching at Randolph College, he looked at the online collection of the Maier Museum and was impressed. He asked if he could hold his class in the Museum gallery. Ratzlaff enjoys teaching the class while surrounded by the artwork. He loves Robert Rauchenburg’s 1973 Serigraph, Watermark, in the Museum’s collection. Rauchenburg uses a visual technique to create “combines”—collages in which many pieces come together and relate to one another to make sense as a whole. Ratzlaff has been working with poems in what he calls a collage method where he throws things together, takes them apart again, and puts them back together to make political and cultural statements, much like Rauchenburg’s visual collages.

Ratzlaff also gets inspiration for his writing from watching people or reading. “The New York Times is a great source. I read the paper before I write every day. The everyday world ought to give us everything we need, and art is part of the everyday world,” he says.

Most often, Ratzlaff’s creative writing process begins with sitting at his desk. He looks out the window, and he looks around the room. His triggers are almost always visual. He also walks outdoors and writes notes in a small black notebook. After his arrival at Randolph College, he made some verbal sketches in the College’s Dell.

Ratzlaff feels strongly about the importance of revision. He believes that work often does not come out whole on the first try. When he thinks he has something in his verbal sketches, he types it into the computer, prints it out, and scribbles on it. He then types the revision into the computer, prints it out, and scribbles on it again. He might do thirty to fifty revisions until he feels the poem is done. He likes to keep every draft. “I have a hard time throwing them away,” he says. Yet he rarely looks at the drafts he keeps. He laughs and says, “We make funny rules for ourselves.”

Ratzlaff gave a reading of his poetry in Randolph College’s Jack Lounge on March 24th, 2010. He says he does not get nervous when doing readings. He enjoys them. Classes, he says, give him more butterflies. “In class you never know. Students are variable.” The poet seems at ease as he stands at the podium before the crowd. He is wearing small round glasses and a full beard mixing with gray. He reads his poem, Dill, about his 93-year-old mother’s last garden before she moved from her home into an assisted living facility.

The garden is small
Two tomatoes, one cucumber, some transplanted pansies
The iris need lifting
But she’ll leave that for someone else.
“Whoever,” she says.

The word “iris” comes out of Ratzlaff’s mouth, all air.

FRAME (Future Restorationists, Artists, and Museum Enthusiasts) is a student volunteer organization that focuses on the College’s excellent collection of American art and provides a valuable service to the Randolph College and Lynchburg communities. Through the club, students broaden their knowledge of art and art history, learn the field of museum education, and develop communication and public speaking skills.

Randolph College FRAME members assisting at the Maier Museum family program

FRAME docents volunteers lead tours for Museum visitors and host receptions and special museum events. They assist with or observe 2^nd and 5^th grade school tours led by community docents, family programs, preschool programs, and middle and high school tours.

FRAME members receive an inside view of museums by working with the Museum staff through a series of training sessions on the permanent collection, and an introduction to touring techniques.

FRAME also frequents local art openings and cultural events, and has made connections with similar clubs on other campuses in the region, such as Hampden-Sydney College. While many of the members are art majors, others are not. FRAME gives students who love art great opportunities to be involved at the Maier without the academic commitment of a major.

The Maier Museum is a great resource for both the Randolph College community and the Lynchburg community at large. FRAME helps to get the word out.

If you can’t visit us at the Involvement Fair or if you have any questions, just email Kathleen Conti at kmconti@randolphcollege.edu. Remember to follow the Maier on FaceBook!

Docents are museum volunteers whose enthusiasm and knowledge help visitors make meaning of the Maier Museum’s collections. Docents work in pairs leading school groups of 12-16 students for 50 minute tours. Docents may also be asked to conduct adult-level tours as needed.

Interested? Read on! Or perhaps you know of an art lover who may be interested? If so, please send this information along to them. Our docent training begins on Monday, September 21.

Reasons to volunteer as a docent:

• You will learn a great deal about American art in general and about the incredible art housed in the Museum’s collection in particular.
• You will have the opportunity to participate in day trips to other museums in Virginia and surrounding areas.
• You will be advocating support for arts education in your community.

What is the time requirement? Our heaviest tour months are November and March. In November we host all fifth graders in the Lynchburg City Schools, and in March all second graders. Docents lead or assist no more than six tours in November and six tours in March.

What is the training requirement? Required training for new docents takes place in September and October at the Museum on Mondays from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.  An optional introduction to American art is offered through the video series American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America with Robert Hughes. This series is screened at the Museum in June, July, and August.

Are there any other opportunities to volunteer at the Museum? Yes! We also need volunteer Receptionists to greet visitors and handle gift shop sales. Receptionists commit to two regular monthly times (1-3 p.m. or 3-5 p.m. weekdays, or 2-4 p.m. Saturday or Sunday).

If you are interested in becoming a docent or receptionist at the Maier Museum of Art, please contact Martha Johnson at 434-947-8136 or mjohnson@randolphcollege.edu.

This event is sponsored by Maier Museum of Art members, and R-MWC alumnae, Howard Perkinson Lawrence ’40 and Nancy Forsyth Walker ’98.

FREE and open to the public. Reception will follow.

Heart with Bricks by Elizabeth Murray

Siegel’s presentation is part of programming in conjunction with the Maier Museum’s current special exhibition, Women and the Maier: Creating Herstory curated by Emily Hanson ’09 which highlights some of America’s most important women artists represented in the permanent collection.

Many art historians consider the Hudson River School to be the first cohesive American art movement. Active in the second half of the nineteenth century, Hudson River School landscape painters are well represented in the College’s permanent collection with masterful works by significant men of the movement: Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Thomas Kensett. Siegel’s Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School is the first known exhibition in the United States to focus solely on the female artists associated with the group. The title of Siegel’s exhibition and presentation is taken from a request by Abigail Adams to John Adams in 1776: “I desire you would Remember the Ladies…if particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion.” Siegel notes, “It is important to recast 19^th century American women landscape painters no longer as the exception…but rather as exceptional.”

This event is sponsored by Maier Museum of Art members, and R-MWC alumnae, Howard Perkinson Lawrence ’40 and Nancy Forsyth Walker ’98.

FREE and open to the public. Reception will follow.

On and Off the Wall is a series of brief reflections on or about works in the collection, including those that may not often make an appearance on the gallery wall due to shortage of display space. Deborah Spanich is the museum registrar. She compiled the digital database and fell in love with many of the works in the collection.

Barclay Sheaks, who started the art department at Virginia Wesleyan College, passed away this year. One of the works in the College’s collection is a hinged diptych by Sheaks. It is a nice example of a subject he visited in several of his paintings: various depictions of “watchers,” figures who gaze either at a specified focus, or who appear to stare ambiguously out at the viewer.

In Watchers, two women direct their attention not toward each other, but at unidentified targets. The young woman on the left holds a glass to her lips and looks beyond the edge of the canvas. On the right, an older woman sits in front of a window, eyes obscured by large dark glasses.

Far from being a portrait, this painting is a study of two people sharing the same space without an obvious connection between them. Sheaks uses lighting and other elements in this work to set up a tension apart from that presented by the undefined focus of the women’s watchful attention.

The face of woman on the left looms within the borders of frame. The break between the two panels effectively bisects her resting arm from her torso at the shoulder, leaving it at the margin of the right-hand painting. This panel is the domain of the other woman, centered in the space, yet not as prominent. In contrast to the first woman who is sleeveless, she is clad in a jacket. The table is devoid of food and her hands are not shown, leaving her without purpose. This composition suggests the women are together but not dining companions.

The light that accents the younger woman’s face and the liquid in her raised glass seems to lead the viewer’s eye toward the second figure. Further, the folded napkin on the table appears to point upward to the shadowed face. However, the shadow and sunglasses make her features enigmatic. It is as though Sheaks deliberately made her expression unreadable. Adding to the tension is the fact that it is not clear where she is looking. Her gaze may follow that of the woman on the left, it may rest on the back of her turned head, or even – unnervingly – on us.

Monday, July 26, from 1 to 2 p.m. we will screen Art21: Transformation featuring Yinka Shonibar MBE, Cindy Sherman, and Paul McCarthy.

ALL are welcome to attend this free event: volunteers, potential volunteers, friends, and anyone interested in art. Learn about some of today’s most intriguing and thought-provoking art in air-conditioned comfort.

Call 947-8136 for more information or just stop in to enjoy the screening with fellow art lovers.

Landscapes don’t always come in the two-dimensional form of paintings. One landscape in our collection is Landscape Bowl by Wayne Higby. This small wheel-thrown raku-fired piece captures the attention with a lightning bolt of color that zigzags down its sides. What isn’t easy to see in a photograph is that this appears on the inside of the bowl as well. Higby is a noted instructor and artist, and recently curated the Scripps Ceramic Annual. He favors the forms of bowls and covered boxes, which he augments with landscape imagery that evokes the scenery of his childhood home state of Colorado. In this piece, it seems that Higby wants to make us aware that memory and locale combine and permeate the ordinariness of the everyday.

Landscape Bowl by Wayne Higby

This old Charleston gate, Smyth or Smythe, is depicted in two works in our collection. Margaret Hardon Wright made the print shown here in about 1900. The other print was made by Alfred Hutty 27 years later. Both Wright and Hutty were members of the Chicago Society of Etchers, although she lived in Boston and he lived in both New York and South Carolina. Their work was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930, along with that of numerous other etchers, on the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the Society.

Margaret Wright collected the work of many of the etchers affiliated with the Chicago collection. She was the source of a large group of prints given to the Museum by her son and his wife, including works by Hutty and examples of work by some of the best etchers in this and other countries. The gates of Charleston are highly regarded, and it’s interesting that two artists in our collection visited this lovely one. I looked for a photo of it on the web, without success. (Does anyone know of one?)

You may see the Hutty etching of Smyth gate in our online catalog at http://maier.randolphcollege.edu/Obj470$2374.

Smythe Gate, Charleston, S.C., by Margaret Hardon Wright