From: Mursalata Muhammad
To: HaikuArtist
Date: 1/3/2007 10:26:46 PM
Subject: Artwork Deadline

Greetings and Good New Year!

Just a reminder that the original deadline for getting your pieces to Grand Rapids is January 19, 2007! ...

FYI:
I've been asked a few (un)interesting questions about our little group. Usually the question comes out something like "After looking at the artists involved in the project, I don't see a connection between their work and the subject of your theme. Is there supposed to be a connection, will there be a connection, and how will a connection be accomplished?"

Here is my response to questions like this (yeah, it's a little long sorry):

Your question of connection is one I’ve gotten before and I’m always surprised when it’s asked. Many of the artists who showed an interest in this project expressed that, though the collaboration was intriguing, they didn’t see how their work connected to interpreting a set of Haiku about the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. My surprise by that sort of response is because I’ve always thought of artist as people whose life work was about connection, experience, empathy and stretching beyond narrow interpretations of individual and collective human experience.

This collaboration doesn’t ask artists to connect their work to the Haiku it asks them to interpret the Haiku. The unrestricted demand of interpretation makes up the core of what an artist is, in my humble opinion anyway. Our fearlessness to reach for interpretation and not rely on what we’ve already done makes the work of an artist a vocation that transcends a resume, curriculum vita, set of images on a website, in a magazine, or hanging in a gallery.

Each artist participating in this project is not expected to dust off a piece of previous work. Each artist has read and been moved by one of the 15 Haiku. Each artist is using their selected poem as a prompt to move toward an interpretation they have not considered before reading the Haiku. Each artist will create a work of art exclusively for what they’ve understood from their chosen Haiku. In creating their artwork each artist’s goal is moving beyond merely making a connection to the human experience embedded in the TransAtlantic Slave trade (and the theme of the 15 Haiku).

When this collaboration is done the various artistic genres that make the exhibit will look much like the present day fruits of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade a sight to behold in wonder with no clear way of distinguishing its once individual parts. So yes, there is supposed to be a connection once artists are moved by one of the Haiku, there will be a connection as each artist interprets the haiku in his/her work, and that connection will be accomplished through each artists’ personal vision of their vocation as artists. So keep this in mind all I say, I say for me and the artists working on this project have some strong feeling(s) calling them to participate. I think it will all be all right.

"summum bonum"