Poster Image

2002 Poster: Suddenly Flowered

$20

Item#: 2002SYR10

Purchase Details

11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.

You also receive…

An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.

Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.

Poem Inspiration Location

Suddenly Flowered

poster information

Description

Suddenly flowered
dresses everywhere. Hurray!
The snow has melted!

This is a scene I see every spring downtown. The first warm sunny day of spring, you suddenly see all these women out with dresses, and lots of times very beautiful spring dresses. They're almost like flowers themselves, these beautiful women and girls, sprouting in the first light of spring.

It's such a wonderful sign of spring when you see that happening. Spring fever. Everyone going out, soaking up the sun and being beautiful. You see legs for the first time! This I know because male friends are always point it out to me.

I had a friend who worked with me, and we'd go out to eat. He'd be so excited. He'd say, “Look! Legs! Legs!” It didn't do anything for me, but I enjoyed his enjoyment, you know what I mean?

I thought I could make a good image from a poem about snow melting. I'm not a big fan of snow. Also, the flowered dresses—I knew that would produce some good imagery. I like fashion and clothes, and I like color a lot.

At first I had a totally different layout, more like a montage, with a couple of different sized women and different flowered apparel. But something about it didn't say, “This is it!” So I kept on drawing. It was just a lot of sketching until I liked what I got.

I laid out the figures first, the shapes of the girls, and then I found patterns that I liked in some old Japanese block prints and Sears catalogs from the '50s. I like the line work and the flat colors. I've always painted like that.