From John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night,” writers have often taken their inspiration from other works of art. This kind of writing—called ekphrasis—is at the heart of a recent assignment that Associate Professor Roberta Brown gave to students in her English composition class.
Brown said the assignment was not originally one she had planned for the semester, but rather one that emerged on the opening night of the recent McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art retrospective of the art of former WNMU art professor Cecil Howard. One of Brown’s students, Brandy Lynn, was also at the opening reception, and Lynn told Brown that she wished the class could write about Howard’s art. Brown agreed that the exhibit would serve as an excellent subject for the students in her English composition class, and she quickly amended her course plans to include the new writing assignment.
Ekphrasis, explained Brown, “is a form handed down to us from the ancient world that gives students the opportunity to connect to art through writing, and to think and write more deeply about the art they have seen. My students also write about music. Art and music speak to the spirit and nurture us throughout our lives regardless of what career field we enter.”
In this sense, she said, the assignment was in keeping with the university’s mission as the state of New Mexico’s Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences University. “I believe it’s important to bring the arts and sciences into as many student experiences as possible,” said Brown. She also wanted to give students a sense of the different experiences and opportunities available to them across campus. It is “great to get students out of the classroom and into parts of campus they might not otherwise visit. I find it important to show students the value in being on campus,” Brown explained.
Jill Winburn, the director of the McCray Gallery, said she was thrilled to see so many students in the gallery. “It is an important resource, but not every student knows it is here,” she said. Brown echoed this idea. “One student told me . . . that this occasion was her first time ever being in an art gallery,” she said.
Lynn, a first-year student from Quemado, said she especially appreciated the expressive dimension of the assignment. “I think this is going to give students a fresh new mindset. I think it allows us to process [our] feelings and experiences.”
The artwork she selected was a painting titled “Remembering.” “It makes me think of back home,” she said, “My dad’s a hunter. It made me remember all the times when I was little and we would go hunting together.”
Carlos Blakeney chose to write about one of Howard’s sculptural pieces, a found object assemblage titled “Window” that he was drawn to because of the three-dimensional aspect of the work. Blakeney said he was enjoying this different kind of English assignment. “You have to find a new way to describe the art and to choose a song to go along with it. It allows you to make connections between different kinds of art,” he noted of the multimedia dimension of the assignment.
Brown observed that “Many students connected deeply with the works in which Cecil Howard features local landscapes and natural elements in and around Silver City.” This connection is exactly what ekphrasis allows the writer to experience. The poet Alfred Corn once said that ekphrasis is “not merely a verbal ‘photocopy’ of the original painting, sculpture, or photograph, but instead a grounded instance of seeing, shaped by forces outside the artwork.” In such writing, says Corn, “description of the original work remains partial, but authors add to it aspects drawn from their own experience—the facts, reflections, and feelings that arise at the confluence of a work of visual art and the life of the [writer].” Through Brown’s English composition class, students were able to explore this confluence for themselves.