The Laurentian Magazine

When I met Sara Lynch at Maxfield’s in Potsdam, NY, the first thing I noticed was her unique style—a pair of pants the color of pale yellow spring and a graphic print zip-up, and vintage light pink cat-eye glasses. It is clear that Lynch weaves her personality and creativity into all realms of her life. Sara Lynch was born and raised in Potsdam, a small college town in Northern New York. She is the daughter of a math professor who stares at the ceiling for hours to solve equations and a mother currently working on a biography about an escaped slave who established a successful business in the North Country in the midst of emancipation. Lynch attended Alfred University, studying painting, photography and psychology. She earned a BFA in painting and ceramics. Upon graduating, she returned to Potsdam to run an after-school program, and to further pursue her art. In a world that is gradually becoming more artificial, Lynch makes it a point to celebrate and depict the beauty of everyday life and to recycle the things that others consider trash.

As an artist, Lynch has taken advantage of the many opportunities that are open to young artists in the United States. She attended the Medalta International Artists Residency, The Penland School of Crafts, and Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts to participate in workshops in ceramics. Lynch also attended the Vermont Studio Center for a four-week residency in painting. It was while she was in Vermont where she started her current line of work, which involves painting on non-traditional objects, such as bras. Her work has been exhibited in several local galleries as well as in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York City.

I prepared several questions for Lynch to deepen my understanding of her own story and philosophy, and how they have implanted themselves into her art.

An adorable rabbit bowl - clay

How old were you when you realized you loved to create art? What was this experience like, and what were you making?

Lynch: When I was about one and a half years old, I was sitting in my highchair, eating mashed potatoes. Apparently, I thought the mashed potatoes would be a better art material than food. Despite my lack of fine motor skills, I patted them into a pile on my tray while exclaiming, ‘I’m making a sark! I’m making a sark!’ Translation: I’m making a shark. Why I was so intent on making a shark is unknown. I have not made any sharks since.

What is your favorite medium to work with, and why?

Lynch: This is hard because I like almost all of them. I like painting because it has such a rich history. I like clay because it’s so fulfilling to make something that people can use every day. I love recycling, and that’s where my fabric, beads, and other random small objects come into play. The immediate satisfaction of capturing an instant for forever makes me love photography. I could probably go on and on about why I like different mediums. This was very problematic in undergrad because they wanted me to focus [in a specific medium].

Where do you find inspiration in creating your art?

Lynch: I’m inspired by the world around me. Particularly, when two seemingly opposite qualities come together, such as things that beautiful, but also ugly. When I find something that is beautiful but also a bit awkward, uncomfortable, or ugly, I get so excited. I collect all kinds of things that possess this quality. Pictures of weird animals like sloths and sun bears, ugly housewares such as a cheap duck shaped soap dish, and tree branches with growths—my collections are a bit excessive. So, I collect all this stuff, and either directly incorporate it as an art material, like with my paintings, or I use it as inspiration for a functional sculpture. My most successful work is a depiction of this dynamic balance between ugliness and beauty.

Do you believe in making statements (political, etc.) in your art, or do you prefer to simply let your art speak for itself (aesthetically)?

Lynch: There’s a principle in physics called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Basically, it states that as soon as you measure something you change it. By speaking about my work, I change the way it is seen, and also how I think when I make things. It is necessary for me to focus my thoughts and ideas. However, since you asked I will answer—I don’t make overt political statements with my work, but when it’s done well, I respect it. My work is, to some extent, social commentary about excess and consumption, but not everyone always picks that up.

What is your favorite work that you have created, and why?

Lynch: Probably anything new. I just made a double swan dish inspired by a really ugly double swan dish that I found at a garage sale run by the sweetest old lady. She was moving out of the house she had lived in for 60 years. She kindly let me take pictures of her swan collections. Right now, that and a new painting I just did of two cell phones are my most favorite things ever. I’ll finish them, love them, and then move on to a new favorite. Although my freshman year of undergrad, I did this project from the front page of the NY Times issue published on the day I was born. It mentioned a chicken in a tree—so I went with that. I collected stories about chickens from everyone I knew and wrote them on cleaned out chicken eggs. I make chickens in various stages of life out of screening, sewn together with wire and paper machéd with brown paper towels. The storied eggs went inside the various chickens. That was an epic project…

Lynch's swans in progress

In many instances, visual art and written art remain divided by the confines of their forms. What is your take on fusing the visual and the written arts? Have you, yourself, ever collaborated with other artists who specialize in different fields?

Lynch: I spent a month at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT for a residency in painting. I slept a lot (something I almost never do), explored the river behind my studio, did lots of yoga and of course, made art. It was an amazing and wonderful place. One of the most amazing parts of it was that there were writers there, too. They were super fun to hang out with, and they kept telling all the artists that we were so normal in comparison to them. One of the writers made a really wonderful poem about the work of various artists there. I suppose that was her collaboration with everyone, but it was really cool to listen to her at her reading, talking about the art people were working on.

Last but not least: art imitates nature or nature imitates art?

Lynch: This question is funny. The only way I can fathom that nature could imitate art is if I were to believe Plato when he claimed that our world is simply an imperfect copy of a transcendent perfect version of our world. This seems ridiculous—so to me, yes, art imitates nature.

You can learn more about Sara’s work at the following links:

Official website: http://saraelynch.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Potsdamelf
Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/potsdamelf

In addition to creating art, Lynch makes adorable and quirky handmade jewelry, which you can find in her Etsy shop. Be sure to follow her Facebook page for updates on her latest creations and artistic musings!

-Madeleine Garone

Today while meeting with my FYS professor to discuss revisions for my final research paper, I was introduced to an amazing website that I had no idea existed: www.750words.com. My professor told me that she could tell that not all of my ideas for my final paper were completely developed in my head and that she wanted me to just write it all out over and over before making any final revisions.

The website helps with just that: writing out all of the ideas swimming in your head to make better sense of what’s going on up there. It encourages members to write 750 words on the site each day with the intention of no one ever reading the entries. For me, this means that I can have huge run-on sentences and horrible grammar and paragraphing and it won’t really matter since no one will ever have to read it, therefore meaning that I can focus more on my ideas than my structuring. I have also found in the past that getting into a habit of writing like this tends to cleanse my mind, making it easier to form sentences in other things I write. It also makes it easier to think during the day or even fall asleep at night; getting everything out of my brain for a few minutes of my day usually relieves a lot of mental stress. I’m hoping that I see these effects as I continue to use the site.

How is this different from just writing in a journal, you say? Or how is this different from using a typical blog like Tumblr or WordPress? Simple: 750words.com pushes members to write by giving the incentive of 1 point for each day you reach 750 words, 2 points for each day you write over 750 words, and even more points for writing on numerous consecutive days. As with all writing processes like this, the goal of this website is to get into a habit of writing so that certain writing techniques or ideas can be sharpened. But the fact that all posts are private with a running count of how many words have been written and a daily count of points earned really makes the process almost seem like a fun race or competition with ourselves. Although today was only my first day using the site, I can already tell that I’m going to love the process of forcing myself to write 750 (or more) words every day.

So how about it? I dare you to go create an account! I dare you to write 750 words every day and I dare you to see the effects that this “cleansing” writing process will have on you.

www.750words.com

-Maggie S.

You may feel like this:

Or like this:

Here are some things to remember:

Get plenty of rest

Don’t wait until the last minute to do assignments

Hydrate

Take study breaks

Take deep breaths

3 weeks!

~Caitlin S.

The Holi (or Phagwah) Festival of Colors is an annual welcoming of spring in the Hindu religion.
Although Canton experienced an erratic spell of hot weather and now we’re back to the seasonal chill, Holi was celebrated this year on March 8th.  It is primarily observed in the Indo-Asia region, Southeast Asia, Caribbean, throughout the United States and wherever there are those with Indian roots.

This exuberant festival is the farewell to winter on the last full moon day of the lunar month and can go on for two days.  The main day, Holi, is celebrated with colored powders and perfumes thrown at one another.  Prayers and offerings are made, and then bonfires are lit for various figures in Hindu mythology. These few days of celebration allows the social castes of Hindusim to break free and come together as one in religious fervor.  Why wouldn’t you want to run around in the streets, covered in technicolor powder for the love of spring?

If you would like some Western interpretations of Holi, check out Ke$ha’s “Take it Off” music video and “Fidelity” by Regina Spektor, or search for videos from the most recent festival.  At St. Lawrence, the Asian Students’ Intercultural Association (A.S.I.A.), the I-House and the Chaplain’s Office has collaborated to usher in spring, traditional-Hindu style. I participated last year and it was exhiliarting and stress-relieving to run around on the quad and throw myself into the colors and the new joys of the season!

I’m helping organize the event once more this year, so be on the lookout—Holi will probably be scheduled for the last week of classes, weather permitting (ideally on Friday, May 4th).  As always, it will be a free and open opportunity to the St. Lawrence community.  Take a well-deserved break before exams begin, grab some white clothes and celebrate Holi!

Namaste,
Nicole E.
Questions? E-mail me at nleigb10@stlawu.edu

In honor of National Poetry Month, I thought I would send some inspiration your way with a poem from, in my opinon, one of the most underrated poets of the 20th century. A whip-smart, firecracker of a woman, Millay used the natural surroundings of her childhood and adult life to produce raw lyric poetry about the rocky beaches, brutal seasons, and social scene of New England. After reading her works, it is not hard to believe that she was the first woman to receive a Pulitzer prize for poetry.

Memory of Cape Cod

The wind in the ash tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro.

I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still your silly bleating,

sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .

They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come

along, it’s long after sunset!

The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind’s

died down!

They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells,too, and come along,

we’ll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.

Listen to the wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the shore.

If you would like to read more about this fascinating woman, look for Nancy Milford’s biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which can be found in the O.D.Y. Library and the Brewer Bookstore.

-Courtney F.

In the heat of the “March Madness”–that is, what I call the abnormal, global warming-inspired, upper-70′s wave of confusion that has hit campus, we attempt to do nothing (and what we consider “nothing” is actually something: we participate in the inevitable rigorous activity that we call day-drinking and playing music outside.  Until the depression that hit this morning, SLU has been blessed with seven days of spring fever.  Amidst that fever writers like ourselves find not only repose (because we strategically use the weather as our vice against entering doors to Richardson on a Thursday after 12 PM) but we also find a respite of exhilaration that results in our art.

Having enrolled in Paul Graham’s “Cooking the Books” SYE this semester, I witness myself reflecting on my quirky habits intrinsic to my familial and cultural background, on which I would otherwise, probably, not even remotely try to consider.  In a rambunctious American lifestyle I have going on here, little do I want to take a second look at it to really ask myself the meaning of it.  (Nor would I further investigate how food, itself, intertwines with my lifestyle and, thus, the purpose of it in the confusion that I call my daily routine.) BUT… so we have it: Paul has encouraged/borderline demanded that his students take the said second look at the way food sneaks itself into our lives, and more specifically, into our culture, and finally try to make something of it down on paper.

After a brooding winter in which I have popped more melatonin into my system than the cumulative amount throughout my 21 years, I have been more affected by the spring than usual.  Both the sedating (intoxicating-ly sedating) and euphoric sensation of the glowing sun’s rays bouncing off your pale-as-hell, glowing-in-the-dark skin evoke aesthetically inspired ideas, and interestingly convert themselves into a decent grade.  It’s charming how after four months of hibernating in our stuffy dorms and townhouses we feel the slightest temptation of the sun from a minute or two of exposing ourselves to outdoor light.  And from here, we witness a gleam of hysteria, as people don’t know how to handle this change of pace– we begin to hear echos of massive sound systems reflecting off the buildings on campus as students open their windows and/or take their drinking outdoors.  What’s most significant about this, I think, is the contagious element of this new-found “harmony;” the moment we hear the intimations of music bursting through the windows of Dean Eaton as we pass by them, we, too, want to set aside our rigorous personal agendas and embark in the bliss of bronzing ourselves under the sun with a cold one in our hands.

And here is the result: the “madness” of the “march” has concluded for a (hopefully) brief period of time, and we find ourselves in 40-degree weather today.  We ask one another what to do about this unfortunate situation, as if we had not expected this spring weather to dramatically fluctuate like it does every year; and so we have it: time to reflect.  As the rising temperatures have quit rising, but rather have considerably dropped, we can redirect our duties of playing in the sun elsewhere, and make something of our experiences this week.  Not only can some of us perhaps try to graduate in the next few weeks to come before the sun comes out again, but we can also look further back into our lives to write down something meaningful.  Since I do not resent working indoors now, due to the absence of the sun, my mind can center itself around the link between food and culture, which I progressively find more interesting each time I write about it…because I am not only thinking about laying my body under the steaming, glorious sun.

-Meggie R.

I was coming back from class in Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone when Professor Cowser got to talking about the video games his kids were playing. He made a few cracks about the story quality of their games. I told him he needed to invest in some good intellectual games. One of the girls asked me if there was such a thing as an intellectual game at which point I brought up Bioshock. Bioshock is about a dystopian world based on Ayn Rand’s objectivism philosophy. I felt kinda bad running the girl over like that but she asked for thought provoking in a game and I gave my best example.  Yet, a better example is coming in October when Bioshock Infinite is released. Infinite really intrigues me in its artistic direction and story line. It borrows heavily from the world fairs that occurred in the early 20th century and the industrial revolution to create this conflict of class and ethnicity that one, is really compelling; and two is exceptionally accurate to the climate of American opinions during that time period. All the issues of worker rights and proletariat revolution have been given the kind of time and focus that always add up to an excellent game. Elements of the story line could honestly be used in history classes, also they have a robot George Washington mini-boss and roller coasters for additional elements of awesome.

I think that’s what I enjoy most about video games they cant rely solely on the story line, they need to compel you with actions and examples. You know Infinte’s story is about xenophobia and a society obsessed with American values, but its the implementation of enemies like a clockwork George Washington that really immerse the player in that universe. I’m not great with blogging and the Internet in general but I’ll try to leave you all a link to the developers discussing the robotic George Washington, from there I honestly recommend checking out the rest of the developer releases on Bioshock Infinite. Its going to be one hell of an experience.

In the midst of declining cultural values (Kardashians, anyone?), it seems that the art of poetry is being buried under layers of stupidity. More often, it seems that people are more willing to turn on their television sets to receive a dose of “enlightenment” than open a book of poetry. Although it seems that poetry falls under the label of ‘dying art,’ it is clear that it still remains an important medium because of the way poems concisely capture an array of philosophical and experiential truths. I see the poem as a living entity, something that enters the tissues of the human mind to promote internal reflection and imagination—something that watching television just cannot do.

Although I would love poetry to be celebrated all the time, April marks National Poetry Month, a month-long recognition of the aesthetic and cultural significance of poetry. This initiative was created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a means to promote poetry in our society. The month of April was a strategic choice for when to celebrate National Poetry Month—it follows the observance of both Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March). Personally, I believe this initiative is a wonderful way to encourage the public’s attention of poetry’s continuing legacy in our cultural history, as well as to fuel the creation of new poems by individuals who otherwise may not have considered it. This month-long celebration is also a means to further integrate poetry into American classrooms, and to get young students excited about both the study and creation of poetry.

There is an array of events promoting the celebration of poetry this month. One of the events this month that I feel the most enthusiastic towards is “Poem in Your Pocket Day” (PIYP), which will occur on April 26 this year. On this day, people will carry a poem in their pocket—either a poem written by an established poet or a poem written by the person who carries it—and will thus be able to share it with whoever they come into contact with, like family, friends, co-workers—even a kind stranger!

I would personally love to write out a series of poems that I love and paste them around the St. Lawrence campus so that these poems would be exposed to many pairs of human eyes. I believe it is possible for everyone, even someone not well acquainted with poetry, to feel SOMETHING after reading.

So, this month, turn off your televisions and wander outside! Write some poetry, read poems, and most important of all, share them. Dare to share your poems and spread the love.

Joanie Mackowski, the author of View From a Temporary Window and The Zoo, was the second visiting writer in this spring’s Writers’ Series.  She came wearing a bird’s nest of consciousness “woven of twigs and tinsel,” and after hearing her, I found a few of those bright strands stuck in my own mind.

Mackowski, above all, celebrates the beauty of language, promoting the idea that poetry is written to be enjoyed, not analyzed.  Her nonsense poems such as “Little Song” are wild as Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” but balanced with a careful structure of meter and slant rhyme.

It is clear that Mackowski loves the cadence, textures, and blending of words.  She often uses scientific terminology, revealing a grace in it that is missing from research papers.  Branching out even farther, many of her newest poems are written from the point of view of a protozoan colony writing its first life instruction manual.  It’s amazing that textbooks can make science dry.

“Self-Portrait, Double Exposure” is an excellent example of her passion for scientific language.  It begins:

Bellow-

ing skull heavy with brains

of pale prunes,

the eyeballs’ continual dual eclipses,

cochlear snails coiled below

the skin, ellipses

of moles

trailing off mid-sentence

Hearing her “definition poems” is like watching her turn an object over and over in her hands, experiencing it in ways I would never have thought of.  “Consciousness” was my favorite, with lines like:

“red pebbles dropped / in the brain’s grey pool”

or: “Our compacted galaxy, its constellations / trembling like flies caught in a spider web”

You can read the entire poem here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243358

Overall, Mackowski comes to poetry with a joyful freshness.  Although she did not share “Unusual Cloud Formations” during her reading, its opening lines exemplify this:

Fish bones and bowlers hang over the mountains,

and people below think, “The world’s too mundane.”

They dream lavish things. “But nothing’s so lovely

as your hand,” thinks the dog who’s troubled by fleas.

For more of Joanie Mackowski, you can find her poems at many wonderful online poetry sites or Brewer Bookstore.

-Ally T.

As you all know, February 24th was the last day to submit to our wonderful magazine and I myself submitted a few pieces this semester. I looked through my portfolio of poems from a class last Spring and picked a few out, but not the following set. This set was inspired by the late actor and comedian John Belushi. At the time of writing said poems, after I’d finished reading his biography, compiled by his widow, Judy and author Tanner Colby, and wanted to express my feelings about his horrible death.

I wanted the reader to feel sorry that he’s dead, just as I felt when I read the biography.

It seems silly now, feeling bad about a man who died before you were born. But what can I say? The man made me laugh and still does.

RIP Johnny B.

~Caitlin S.