Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Matt and I worked on a collaborative project last year. Matt wrote a number of micro fictions inspired by some of my paintings. I have them posted on my web site danramirez.net as well as one "A Kind of Blue: In C," that can be found in the “Songs Out Of Sight” section. I also plan to repost all of them one at a time on my blog Luz as time permits. I am hopeful that Matt and I ( and Josh Mayday as well, if I can persuade him) will be doing more collaborative projects in the future. I was amazed (though not surprised) at the result from our initial project and look forward to the possibility of more.
Micro fiction, given my own minimalist aesthetic, seems to be a wonderful counterpart to some of the ideas that I explore. Reading Matt and Josh’s material has, from time to time, given me much to think about and I often find myself inspired by an insight that sparks an idea for my work. It reminds me of a somewhat similar inspiration when I was honored by Richard Cohen to be asked to use an image of one of my paintings as a cover for his wonderful book of short stories “Pronoun Music.” (If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so).
As many of you know, I am preparing to do a commissioned project in Chicago (eight very large-scale paintings) based on excerpts from the book “Chicago: A City On The Make” written by Nelson Algren. And I have also been in dialogue with author Stuart Dybek (“Coast of Chicago,” “Streets In Their Own Ink/Poetry”) about the possibility of doing a collaboration in the future.
So…having said all this…I invite you all to stay tuned for what hopes to be an interesting year. And of course, as always…I will try in earnest to keep up with everyone else’s blogs. Ah! Such a life. Aren’t we lucky!