The Lady Victory - Poems by Jane Vincent Taylor

Ennis Quadrangle, Patron Saint of Honne and Tatemae, acrylic and collage on stonehenge paper, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Some rights reserved.

I am pleased to announce that my friend Jane Taylor has a new book of poems available, published by Turning Point Press.

The Lady Victory is a wonderful collection imagined within the walls of a home for unmarried pregnant girls. This is the setting for Jane's poems, but that tells you nothing of the warmth, love and humor to be found among the pages.

Jane chose my painting Ennis Quadrangle, Patron Saint of Honne and Tatemae for the book's cover. She and I talked about things that go unsaid, either because they are forbidden, or maybe just thought of as dangerous words. I can imagine many things going unsaid inside Victory.

See my previous post to learn more about the meaning of Ennis Quadrangle.

Here is one of my favorite poems (reproduced here with permission):

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from Part II: Dear Little Flame the Love Letters of Sister B.

26

Dear little wind behind the rain,

I wonder if you received the crocheted hat I made for you. I should have saved it for your birthday, but my favorite is Thanksgiving. They probably think these gifts come from your mother. She would have sent you pink but I thought purple. She would have dressed you in leotard and tutu. Little violet, your mother loved to dance. She had all the Victory girls doing the Pony on the screened-in porch. I secured permission for her to stage a mini Oklahoma. Mother S. insisted they leave out Ado Annie's song - Can't Say No. In my three year stint at Victory only your mother knew what to do with guilt and shame. She made everybody love her. If you ever feel like dancing, you best not fight against it. Everybody's born to something.

Born to write to you, Sister B.

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The Lady Victory is available at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City, or from Amazon. Jane is the featured author and will read selected poems at Full Circle's Final Sunday Poetry Reading on 24 June, 2012. (See Full Circle's Events page for details.)

Later this summer, Jane is teaching a writing course titled The Poetry of Home at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center. There are still spaces available - I wish I could go.

Rhymes With Jenny, Smells Like Saturday

Rhymes With Jenny, Smells Like Saturday, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 22 x 22 inches, 2011. Some rights reserved.

At the opening reception for You're Pretty at the Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery in 2011, some ladies approached me and said, "Okay, we want to know. What rhymes with Jenny and smells like Saturday?"

I had to tell them that I didn't know. The phrase was in my head when I woke up one morning. This happens with delightful regularity.

Mellifluous Moue Collage Sketch

Mellifluous Moue sketch & mask collage, mixed media sketchbook pages, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Some rights reserved.

Collage sketch for Mellifluous Moue, Patron Saint of Vocabulary.

Here’s the final drawing:

WordPress Tip: Hire Jason Ormand

LIÁN TYPES »Reina« No.1 | white on black by Flickr user arnoKath. Click image to view source. Jason Ormand knows that great design makes the world a better place.

Sarahatlee.com has been on the air for eleven years. It's gone through many design iterations, some that I created myself, more done with the help of web design pros.

Division of Labor

In recent years I have learned that I am not the person best qualified to design and maintain my own website. I could learn to become so, but I already have a job as a full-time artist.

Turning sarahatlee.com over to professional web designer Jason Ormand is one of the best investments I have ever made. Jason shares my penchant for clean, elegant design, and he has a fine-tuned understanding of how people interact with the web.

I asked Jason to tell us a little more about what he does for a living.

When people ask, "So what do you do?" how do you answer?

I’m a Web Designer and Front End Developer.

How did you get into this business?

In 2007, Windows “automatically fixed” an external hard drive that I used to store all of the photos from my various adventures while I was in the Navy. Windows reformatted my hard drive and I lost 4 years of photos. Later that same day I was installing Linux on my laptop. That snowballed into an insatiable thirst for all things computers. I was building websites within a month.

What do you love about good design?

Clarity. Making a web site aesthetically pleasing while staying laser focused on the primary goal.

What do you hate about bad design?

Failure to communicate. If visitors are confused, it’s very unlikely that they will succeed at their task. If their task was to buy something from you or find your contact page, you lose.

Do you have a dream job, other than this?

This is my dream job. I love what i do.

Dude, are you for hire?

Yes. I’m currently accepting new projects. Interested parties can go to JasonOrmand.com/contact, where they can find the various ways to contact me.

Thanks, Jason.

Still Life with Vans

Choos, oil on canvas, 2005 by Sarah Atlee. Some rights reserved.

In all my years of art school, nobody told me that mixing brown and white would make blue. Cool.

This still life painting is of one of my beloved pairs of Vans Sk8-Hi Tops. The details are scratched out using an X-Acto knife.

Painted under the instruction of Robert Heischman at the Rochester Institute of Technology.