Sara Scranton’s “Spider Girl” partakes of old circus posters and underground comics from a generation past, but it has a modern twist that tweaks the formula. “Don’t get caught in her web,” the caption warns. It gives Spider Girl a little say in the matter.
That say is brought out in the poem by Karen Ponzio of the same title. “You speak of webs woven / Though your version of a trap is / My version of home. / Should I be punished for being hungry? / Is every ‘should’ a lure / Towards my demise? / Break my heart if it feeds / Your appetite or / Brings you joy. / I can rebuild anything / You attempt to destroy.” The poem, written in response to the painting, twists the painting even further, turning it inside out. Each piece amplifies the other.
The collaboration and heightening of meaning is at the heart of “Poetry Crisis,” a dual show by artist Scranton and poet (and frequent Independent reporter) Ponzio running now for rest of the month at Never Ending Books on State Street. Warm and inviting with just enough weird to make it interesting, the show is full of visual and literary delights that proves how artists can often make their best work when doing it together — even when the particular art forms (painting and writing) are usually practiced alone.
“Sara Scranton (a.k.a. Lipgloss Crisis) and Karen Ponzio (a.k.a. KP) have been friends and admirers of each other’s work for many years. Poetry Crisis is a melding of Sara’s visual art and Karen’s poetic musings where one influences inspires, and honors the other,” an accompanying statement reads. “Both artists’ work reflects their beliefs that 1. all art is transformative and healing, and 2. a good cry with a good friend is its own kind of art, and thus is transformative and healing as well. We hope you enjoy these pieces and are inspired to create art with your friends as well. And if you need someone to cry with, just let us know. We are here for you.”
Even the way the show is hung hints at the closeness of the collaboration and between the collaborators themselves, as a viewer perusing the wall can’t help but ping-pong between visuals and words, perhaps taking in the painting, then reading the poem, then returning to the painting to see if the words change the perception or understanding of the painting.
At the show’s most serious, two painting-poem pairs deal with Mary Magdalene, with whom Scranton and Ponzio share a certain affinity — not with her as the prostitute that men saw her as, but as an intelligent, free-thinking, and deeply misunderstood and underestimated woman. So Ponzio’s poem goes: “It has been said that I don’t know how / to love him / but I only love one way / and I have been denied too many times / to recall. / While crosses are raised / and institutions fall / men call me a whore and I laugh in their faces / even though I know they might kill me / in response. / I would rather die amused / than refuse to live my truth.” The poem gathers energy until, in the end, Mary achieves a liberation in her mind that the Bible never granted her. “I move across the sand like a silken veil gliding / over a hand / my footprints wighted with a body made / to dance. / I will never apologize for bearing witness / to greatness or pain. / Sometimes they are one and the same.”
But Scranton and Ponzio also make room for playfulness. Scranton’s piece for a poem called “To Be Human” is pure children’s book sweetness. Ponzio’s declaration of selfhood meets Scranton’s piece with a well-placed neologism. “Call me extra all you want / But please know / Though I am not / Of this earth / We are connected by a need to / Reach for the stars.” In this piece, Ponzio finds one of her most expansive moments of liberation. “Show me what it means to be human,” she writes. “I’ll show you what it means to be free.”
Exuberant and thoughtful, challenging and comforting, and above all, a lot of fun, Scranton’s and Ponzio’s show is a celebration of friendship and a document of how partnering up with someone else can sometimes bring out our best selves.
“Poetry Crisis” runs now through November at Never Ending Books, 810/812 State Street. Visit Volume Two’s website for hours and more information.
