Show at Mendocino’s Artists’ Co-op explores connections between images and words 

MENDOCINO, CO., 10/3/24 — Once again, the Artists’ Co-op of Mendocino and the Writers of the Mendocino Coast have combined talents to produce an exhibit of images and words that play off each other’s ideas. This is the 13^th year that the two groups have collaborated to produce “Ekphrasis XIII – Art Inspiring Other Art” featuring work by 20 pairs of writers and visual artists. 

The standard dictionary definition of ekphrasis is “a literary description of a work of art.” The term comes from ancient Greece, with Homer’s elaborate description of the shield of Achilles in “The Iliad” commonly used as an example. The Academy of American Poets explains that the purpose of ekphrasis “was to define a thing with such detail that the reader could envision it as if it were present.” It also served as a way of sharing visual art through language before accurate reproductions were available. 

The term has continued to evolve, with ekphrasis coming to include a writer’s interpretation or meditation on a piece, as exemplified by another classic, John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Inverse — or reverse — ekphrasis now describes the creation of visual works in response to the written word. 

Mendocino’s show was the brainchild of artists and writers getting together in 2012 to work on a potential project. Artists’ Co-op member Karen Reynolds explains that as the artists and writers talked about ideas, one writer pointed out that they were actually creating an ekphrasis exhibit. The name stuck. But Reynolds explains that ekphrasis is even broader, and that the tagline, “art inspiring other art,” could be any artistic pairing: “visual art and music, visual art and writing, music and writing, sculpture and music, or tap-dancing and skywriting.” 

So far, the Mendocino show is limited to a more traditional approach, with a group of writers responding to works by visual artists and a separate group of visual artists responding to the work of another group of writers. For example, writer Maureen Eppstein responded to Debra Lennox’s woodblock “Phantom” with a poem, “October Prayer.” Eppstein writes, “Let there be rain that the old pear orchard may bloom another spring and my horse and I sniff white-blossomed air in bee-hummed quiet.” 

Two sets of pairings include a bonus – two writers share their very different responses to the same work, and two artists give their take on a single piece of writing. 

The pairings are done anonymously, meaning that the creative results and identities of the 42 participants were only revealed when the exhibit went up earlier this week.  

“Ekphrasis XIII – Art Inspiring other Art” runs now through Nov. 4 at the Artists’ Co-op of Mendocino, 10400 Kasten St., from 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. daily.  

The public is invited to meet the artists and writers and see their work at a gallery reception on Mendocino’s Second Sat., Oct. 12, from 4-7 p.m. On Sun., Oct. 20, from 2:30-4:00 p.m., the writers will read their work, accompanied by a slideshow of the corresponding visual art, at the Mendocino Community Center, 998 School St., in Mendocino.  

The exhibit will also be available online indefinitely at the Artists’ Co-op website (look for the “Exhibitions” pull-down menu). For more information about the Writers of the Mendocino Coast, visit its website.