How Things Come and Go

I'm headed into my last week at the guest house. This residency has been an absolute pleasure, the kick my writing needed, a reminder about community, just everything. Thank you to the board and staff who chose and have supported me, especially Nan Friedman and Naomi Okuyama.

This past Monday, I was spending some time in the sitting room on the first floor, working through the third stanza of a poem that had been giving me fits -- mainly because I couldn't find the right image to express a certain kind of healed brokenness. Just as I decided to take a break, a couple walked in. They were visiting from Asheville, North Carolina, a creative community I'd just spoken with my sister and mom (who also happened to be visiting me from North Carolina) about visiting later this month.

The couple introduced themselves, asked about my work, told me about their own lives. She is a writer, he a musician. Their daughter, also a writer, is in residency at UNC Chapel Hill. As we conversed, my mom and sister arrived with lunch.

Two days before, driving to El Cid to see some kitschy flamenco, we'd listened to a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on the concept of genius. Gilbert notes that it's only fairly recently that artists take credit for (or, when it's not so great, disavow) their own work. For centuries before this ego-driven way of understanding creating, we seem to have understood genius as something like a personal fairy -- a visitor who arrived with a story, a picture, a song. If the work's great, genius; if the work's poor, genius. You see.

I gave the couple a tour of the house. As we looked out at the beach from one of the upstairs bedrooms, we talked about the city seagulls one often sees on the beach with injured legs that have healed into knobby, stubby (and thankfully secondary) appendages. The husband mentioned a haiku with which he was acquainted:

The one-legged man
watches the one-legged bird
as it flies away.

The haiku gave me an image: the footprints a stub-legged seagull has left on wet sand. Something like

<    <    <    <    <    <    <    <    <    <
   .     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .      .


and then, no prints at all.

-- Catherine Coan, 11/12/18

Following (and Reconciling) Different Artistic Currents with Catherine Coan

How is the residency going? Is it as you expected? Does the location inspire your progress? 

I love the peaceful, light-filled environment at the guest house. Sometimes, I think I can feel the energy of all of the creative people who have stayed and worked there before me. It’s been a challenge to write during certain hours as opposed to whenever I feel like it (which, let’s be honest, is usually less often than optimal). I wondered how I would meet that challenge. I’m happy to say that I have a bunch of new poems. Perhaps I’ve learned something about discipline — Perhaps not. 

Who can benefit visiting you during your Monday office hours? 

Writers, people thinking about becoming writers, students, and anyone in or interested in the arts might benefit from a visit. I also love to talk politics, books, travel, movies, dogs….  

Catherine at work in the Marion Davies Guest House

Although your work as Writer-in-Residence here at the Beach House is solely focused on poetry and the art of writing, you’re also a noted visual artist. It might not be an unusual combination, to be both a poet and to work in another discipline, but the form that your artmaking takes is quite unusual.  

I work a lot in this form called hybrid taxidermy. It might seem an unusual combination, but a poem is a kind of still life, as is taxidermy; both offer me the opportunity to meditate on the human relationship to wildness and domesticity. 

Catherine Coan, detail from Her Question, 2016 

I know our readers might be curious about your taxidermy practice as well? 

I practice ethical sourcing; this means that I don’t use animals who have been hunted or killed for the work, and I have relationships with breeders, farms, and others who provide me with animals who’ve died of natural causes. I also sometimes repurpose taxidermy which has already been completed. You can see the work at my website, CatherineCoan.com

Meret Oppenheim, Le Déjeuner en fourrure, 1936

When you look back at Meret Oppenheim's famous teacup, in some way it seems like a progenitor to this genre. That piece seems to biomorphically evoke a whole animal in some way beyond what simply covering an object in fur “should” manage to do. Would you consider this to be hybrid taxidermy? 

I’ve always loved this piece. I don’t think the teacup is hybrid taxidermy — Rather, using fur as a medium. But I do think you’re right that the piece evokes a whole animal — likely because it’s entirely covered, so its “new thingness” is complete. My sense is that for a piece to be considered taxidermy, it needs to play harder at being an animal. Oppenheim’s piece seems to me a little more highbrow than that, with ideas about femininity and utility at the forefront. Cute-ing the piece up — with eyes or a tail or antlers or something — would diminish it, don’t you think? 

Your recent public event, "Cross-disciplinarity" gathered artists who juggle multiple disciplines - any insights stick with you?  

The event brought together artists who I know go across genres to talk about how multiple directions feed their work - Mathieu Callier writes poetry, prose, and children’s books; Cindy Rinne is a textile artist and poet; Sheree Winslow writes both memoir and flash fiction; Leslie Wood-Brown is an oil painter, printmaker and poet. I loved Mathieu’s idea (from David Bowie) about wading into the ocean juuuuust past one’s comfort zone, where one can’t quite touch the sand below. That’s where the good stuff happens! How when you work in multiple disciplines you’re always working with impostor syndrome in some fashion, and being confronted with that provides an opportunity to improve. And I loved Leslie’s thoughts about mentorship, in particular for women... though regardless of gender, so often it’s just one word of affirmation… it’s all it takes for us as artists and writers to have the confidence to move forward. 

Cross-Disciplinarity discussion: Left to right, Catherine Coan, Leslie Brown, Sheree Winslow, Cindy Rinne and Mathieu Callier