FROM THE DESK: Liza Coviello and Leslie Friedman
This November, pairs of NAPOLEON members will be exhibiting collaborative pieces they have generated in response to the Gertrude Stein poem, written in 1923, “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso,” at Traction Company, located in West Philadelphia for CITYWIDE. In the coming months, we will be updating our blog with From the Desk postings to share work and ideas as they are evolving within the different pairings of NAPOLEON members.
FROM THE DESK: Liza Coviello and Leslie Friedman
Some behind the scenes views of Coviello and Friedman’s upcoming collaborative hanging installation:
Land is a literal play-on-words echoing the structure of Gertrude Stein’s poem. As a collaborative pair, we agreed on two central elements and then worked independently until installation. The first decision was to create work that made use of the height available to us at Traction Company (a real treat). Second, we isolated a part of the poem and agreed to play with this idea of land as both a noun and a verb. In our own ways, we found materials and strung together our ideas. Unlike some of the other collaborative pieces in our exhibition, the work did not really come into being until installation. With Coviello thinking of “land” as plant life and earth, and Friedman translating “land” as an action opposite to flight, the pieces hang together as visual renderings of Stein’s cubist poetry, word games, and stream of consciousness.
Join us at our opening reception to see the final outcome of this piece alongside other NAPOLEON members’ collaborative works, November 2nd, from 2-5pm and during Trolley Day, November 16th , from 2-5pm, for CITYWIDE! Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months from other pairings of our members!
