Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2013SYR06
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
Oak Trees in the Sun
poster information
Description
Oak trees in the sun
Curled up on straw and first snow
a sleeping red fox
We were moving into our house in Syracuse, from Oswego, on December 1st, 2009.
It was late in the afternoon and the first snow of the season began to fall. I looked out of a large living room window—we had a small, fenced-in backyard in Syracuse—and beyond the fence, under a tree, was a red fox curled up sleeping. It was such a welcoming sight for me, and even on that same afternoon, several deer visited us. When we moved to the city, seeing those beautiful creatures in our backyard felt like home.
When I see something—if there's a flash of beauty in nature and I see that occur—the haiku more or less write themselves. If I see something that really touches me, or moves me, I like to write it down—and a haiku is born.
I think art, for me, is kind of playful. I think that's kind of where my style, my approach, kind of everything comes from. If it's not fun for me, I'm probably not producing something good.
In terms of the poem, I read it, and I just kind of had this idea of a fox curled up around a building. I chose a landmark building in downtown; it's kind of what Syracuse meant to me, and I drew the fox in referencing the very graphic kind of look. I'd never utilized text in any of my pieces, so it was fun finding my style in hand lettering. I think any assignment such as this where you get invested in can always yield positive results.