Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul

STEDMAN GALLERY May 30 – December 7, 2019 1

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Democratic

Vistas:

Whitman, Body & Soul STEDMAN GALLERY May 30 – December 7, 2019

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UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER Walt Whitman, 1848

Foreword

Celebrating the 125th anniversary of Walt Whitman’s arrival in Camden, the Stedman Gallery presented the exhibition Visual Poetry and Whitman’s Camden in 1998 that included work by contemporary artists inspired by Whitman. Work by two of the artists in that exhibition, Paul Stankard and John Giannotti, can also be found in Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul. Visual Poetry and Whitman’s Camden featured artifacts from the collection of the Walt Whitman House in Camden and photographs from the Camden County Historical Society. I was partial to the Romantic English poets, and so Whitman’s descriptions of nature, and of life itself, spoke to the artist in me. It was the beginning of a deepening relationship with Walt Whitman, for myself and for Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts (RCCA).

John Giannotti’s sculpture, Whitman with Butterfly (2008), is the unofficial campus mascot, and serves as a popular campus meeting point located just outside the Rutgers—Camden Campus Center. I conclude a tour on public art along Cooper Street at that statue. Giannotti added new elements to Whitman with Butterfly, differentiating it from two earlier versions, that include a multi-colored surface evoking the “good gray poet,” a wood texturing on the cane, and gold-plated watch fob and butterfly.

During the 2015 Stedman Gallery exhibition Sounds of Camden, RCCA organized a multi-person reading of Whitman’s Song of Myself in the gallery. A second reading took place on Rutgers Day in 2017, when a crowd of Whitman admirers recited outside at the Whitman sculpture. For both readings, we used the “Deathbed Edition” of 1891-1892, Whitman’s final version of the poem in 52 parts; 52 voices joined together to orate the poem, each adding her or his own “barbaric yawp” to this moving, shared experience. Walt Whitman showed up, too, in the form of Camden’s own Rocky Wilson, and closed out both readings, reciting parts 51 and 52 with passion from memory.

In 2017, I was inspired by an impromptu tour of Camden sites to paint a watercolor of Whitman’s tomb in Harleigh Cemetery, located in south Camden, many years after first seeing the tomb, which Whitman himself designed. It is strikingly situated on a hillside and worth a visit. That same year, Bruce Garrity made a painting and a drawing of Whitman’s Camden home at 328 Mickle Street (now the Walt Whitman House) for the Stedman Gallery exhibition, Picturing Camden.

Marking the 200th anniversary of Whitman’s birth, Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul will inspire civic and artistic dialogue around the ideals and ideas of Whitman, a voice relevant to today’s world, keeping his words and spirit alive in Camden—the poet of democracy and equality; of the working class; of the common man and woman.

Part of a larger regional program, Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul features eight artists whose work addresses various themes in Whitman’s oeuvre. Whitman lived his last 19 years in a working-class neighborhood in Camden, and the exhibition artists draw on that experience, insisting on the importance of place and rootedness.

The participating artists have generously contributed their time and energy to ensure the project’s success, and we deeply appreciate their efforts.

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The artifacts in the exhibition were selected from the collection of the Walt Whitman House, New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry, at 328 Mickle Street in Camden. Leo Blake, Curator of the museum, lent his expertise in authoring a catalog essay and advising on inclusion of artifacts from the collection.

Each staff member of Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts made valuable contributions to the project. In particular, Cyril Reade, Director, and Nancy Maguire, Associate Director for Exhibitions, gave their expert attention to every aspect of the exhibition. Additional thanks go to Tyler Hoffman’s Rutgers—Camden Walt Whitman seminar students and Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts exhibitions, education, and community arts programs are funded in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; Subaru of America Foundation; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and other generous contributors.

Noreen Scott Garrity Associate Director of Education Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts

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ALLEN CRAWFORD

Multitudes, 2014

JOHN GIANNOTTI Study for Whitman with Butterfly, 1988

Democratic

Vistas:

Whitman, Body & Soul

Walt Whitman moved to Camden in 1873 from Washington, DC, at the age of 54. He remained in the city until his death in 1892. During his years in Camden, much of his writing life was behind him, but by no means all. While living in Camden he revised his book Leaves of Grass and guided it through multiple editions. He published Memoranda During the War and Two Rivulets (both typeset and printed in Camden) in the summer of 1875 (the latter included a re-publication of his essay Democratic Vistas) and Specimen Days & Collect in 1882. Later came November Boughs (1888) and Good-bye My Fancy (1891), a miscellany of poetry and prose. It was in Camden that Whitman’s reputation ballooned to the point of celebrity.

It is therefore fitting to celebrate Whitman’s legacy (as part of the larger regional celebration of his 200th birthday in 2019) in Camden—a city that was very dear to him. And it is also fitting to focus on contemporary visual artists who were inspired by his life and writing, as this exhibition does, in light of Whitman’s own interest in the visual arts and the long history of visual artists engaging with his work.

The bipartite title of the exhibition speaks to Whitman’s sense of the entwinement of the body and the body politic, of the material and the spiritual. The first part—Democratic Vistas—invokes the title of Whitman’s 1871 prose work of the same name, where he indicts post-Reconstruction American society for its hypocrisy and “depravity,” and accuses political life, both local and national, of being “saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration.” Whitman also was concerned with what he saw as society’s fragmentation (a reality we live with today), its fabric seemingly in imminent danger of being torn apart: “the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack of a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me.” Democratic Vistas was meant to wake citizens up to that painful fact, and calls for a revitalization of American democracy, in part through art.

The second half of the title—Whitman, Body & Soul—gestures to the equal footing that the poet gives these twin forces in his poetry: “The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body”; “I am the poet of the body, / And I am the poet of the soul”; “I have said that the soul is not more than the body, / And I have said that the body is not more than the soul.” Whitman holds both the body and the soul sacred, privileging neither.

Whitman’s conception of the union of body and soul is captured in an 1877 photograph that shows a (cardboard) butterfly (the soul) perched on his outstretched finger (an image reproduced in some of his books and one that serves as the basis for John Giannotti’s public sculpture, a study for which appears in these

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pages). The artwork in the exhibition reflects that conviction, where physical forms—plants, animals, objects, and even the poet’s body—speak to the living soul of the universe.

The very materiality of this catalog is impressed with meaning as well. The cover and its typeface pay homage to the physical look of the pamphlet Democratic Vistas. Also, the embellishments within this essay and elsewhere reproduce those that punctuated and adorned the many editions of Leaves of Grass. Even the paper stock is meant to bring Whitman’s original feel to life.

Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul features artists in conversation with Whitman, many of them extending in provocative ways his critiques of prevailing sex and gender norms into the twenty-first century. These artists graphically interpret Whitman’s texts, giving flesh to his poems, some of which were controversial in his day. From “Song of Myself” to “Children of Adam” to “Calamus” to the nature writing of Specimen Days, the work in the exhibition takes Whitman and re-materializes him, celebrating the enduring impact of the poet and his scriptures of equality. The wide range of media on display—assemblages, drawings, paintings, photographs, sculpture—suggests the vitality of Whitman across the contemporary arts scene.

Allen Crawford’s “illustrated interpretation” of Whitman’s epic poem “Song of Myself,” the first poem in the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass, stays true to the “blab” of the poems themselves, through vivid coloring and zig-zag hand-lettering that together bring a rambunctiousness to the page. He has turned the original sixty-page poem into an exuberant 256-page work of art, published as Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself (2014). With words of the poem woven through the illustrations, Crawford asks the reader to navigate the text horizontally and vertically, in a drawing style that he describes as “plainspoken.” The three large-scale screen prints in the exhibition—“Babe of the Grass,” “Frog,” and “Multitudes”—correspond to Sections 6, 21, and 31 of Whitman’s poem, respectively, and pay tribute to the poet’s wonder at the miracle of creation—a world that brings life out of death (“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death”) and feeds the soul.

Paul Cava’s photographs, based on the “Children of Adam” sequence of poems first published in the third (1860) edition of Leaves of Grass, extol the virtues of heterosexual love. It was primarily on the basis of this cycle of 15 (later 16) erotic poems that got the 1882 edition of Leaves banned in Boston. The graphic nature of a number of the poems is matched by Cava’s erotic illustrations (ten of which, across the full length of the poetic cycle, are on display), where the naked male and female body, and the procreative urge, stand unashamed. Like “Children of Adam,” Cava’s work celebrates the physical world after the fall from Eden and the redemptive power of love and sex. In the gallery, his photographs are paired with the verbal texts from “Children of Adam” that serve as his inspiration, just as they are in his book Walt Whitman / Paul Cava, Children of Adam from Leaves of Grass (2005).

Caroline Carlsmith’s interactive art challenges the notion of a static self, highlighting instead a performative self in keeping with Whitman’s own staging and re-staging of identity across the six editions of Leaves of Grass. In Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet (comprised of 45 works, and represented in the exhibit by six), for instance, she plays with the 45 poems of the “Calamus” cluster (in its original 1860 form) through word clouds made from combinations of lorem ipsum (a meaningless filler text used by typesetters since the 1500s) that exactly match the word count of each corresponding “Calamus” poem. Her sprawling ink drawing of 45 calamus plants also invokes the 45 poems of “Calamus,” where, Whitman reports, the plant

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grows ‘by margins of pond-waters,’ a place where men may meet to share their love for one another. In his Preface to Two Rivulets, he also makes clear the importance of comradeship to a healthy democracy: “Important as they are in my purpose as emotional expressions for humanity, the special meaning of the Calamus cluster of Leaves of Grass … mainly resides in its Political significance.” Bringing together the textual and visual, Carlsmith intervenes provocatively in the poet’s work, and thereby reenacts his “presence.”

John Gutoskey’s series of mixed-media assemblages, Whitman’s Men, likewise responds to the homoerotic “Calamus,” but differently. His work is composed of found objects and takes the form of “shrines.” For example, In The Stillness (2011) is composed of “wood box, wood pelt stretcher, wood chess pieces, vintage tin lid, mother of pearl buttons, clock case, cardboard game box, vintage postcard, model train figures & bench, cigar mold, vintage photos, digital scans, paper, Victorian scrap, wax.” These everyday objects viscerally transport us back to the nineteenth century and domesticate—that is, make less unfamiliar—malemale affection. His assemblage Press Forth, Red Drops (2019) returns in particular to the poetic sequence “Live Oak, with Moss,” which exists in manuscript only and stands behind the published “Calamus.” That cycle portrays even more obviously than “Calamus” does a sexualized dynamic, the arc of an intimate relationship between two men that is not without pain.

Paul Stankard’s exquisite glass work further reveals Whitman’s location of the spiritual in the material, and vice versa, as he captures the “original energy” of Nature unchecked. In Specimen Days, Whitman includes meditative descriptions of the natural world written at the Stafford Farm on Timber Creek in southern New Jersey as he was recovering from a paralytic stroke. With this and other of Whitman’s nature observations in mind, Stankard draws out Whitman’s sense of the revivifying effects of the open air.

Suspended in glass, such specimens as moss, flowers, and bees transfix for the viewer Whitman’s humble ecology. It is worth noting that the section of Specimen Days focused on nature begins in May 1876, as Whitman symbolically connects his own effort at rejuvenation with that of the nation during the centennial celebrations.

In 1992, John Giannotti was commissioned by the Walt Whitman Association—an outgrowth of the original Walt Whitman Fellowship that formed to keep Whitman’s legacy alive—to create a marker for his tomb in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden in recognition of the centenary of his death. His illustration on a granite marker depicts the poet in old age, full gray beard flowing and cane at his side (it is loosely based on an 1889 photo). Giannotti’s 8-foot-tall bronze sculpture (Whitman with Butterfly, 2008) that stands majestically in front of the Rutgers-Camden Campus Center is modeled on an 1877 photo of Whitman, and reminds us of the integration of body and soul that Whitman sincerely celebrated. Also in the exhibition are Giannotti’s studies on paper and a bust of the poet that led up to the creation of the statue.

Finally, and dramatically, Mark Stockton and Lewis Colburn’s hands-on installation, created specifically for this exhibition, animates Whitman the man at home in Camden. Their replication of Whitman’s aged body—in parts—and of his rocking chair are based on 3-D scans of the plaster casts of Whitman’s body housed at Harvard and Princeton and precise measurements of the chair taken from the original at the Whitman House in Camden, respectively. Allowing visitors to sit in the rocking chair next to the castings, the artists invite us to inhabit the space in the front parlor from which Whitman looked out at the world passing by on busy Mickle Street. The drawing above the chair—a recreation of an illumination by the poet William Blake—inspired Whitman as he designed his own tomb. Colburn and Stockton’s installation reincarnates Whitman even as it calls forth his absence, and allows us the opportunity to interact innovatively with him.

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In addition to the contemporary pieces in Democratic Vistas: Whitman, Body & Soul, a variety of artifacts from the Whitman House in Camden have been interspersed to give a tangibility to the poet and his Camden connection. Included are a bronze bust by Louis Mayer; a plaster cast of Whitman’s left hand made in death by Samuel Murray, an associate of Thomas Eakins; and, as a sort of frontispiece to the exhibition as a whole, an oil painting of Whitman on the ferry that ran from Camden to Philadelphia titled Whitman on the Camden Ferryboat Wenonah (1940) by Haddonfield, New Jersey, artist Hannah Cutler Groves, who had met the poet on the ferry when she was a young girl. Also on display are a reproduction of an 1845 dauguerreotype of Whitman (the earliest in existence); the original death notice posted on Whitman’s front door; and an original copy of the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

These specimens of material culture illuminate Whitman’s art, life, and times, in the same spirit as the featured artists do. Through the artists’ vigorous exchanges with—and embodiments of—the poet, they attest to his lasting significance and “contribute a verse” to his song. They enable us as viewers to participate in Whitman’s work—to be in dialogue with him—in answer to his call to join him in the future: ‘I stop some where waiting for you.’

Tyler Hoffman Professor of English and Communication Rutgers University—Camden

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PAUL CAVA Eden (large version), 2003

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CAROLINE CARLSMITH Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 45, 2012

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Walt Whitman in Camden

‘Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

—Walt Whitman, “Kosmos”

By the time Whitman arrived in Camden in May of 1873, he had attained literary fame, albeit controversial, through several editions of his book of free-verse poetry, Leaves of Grass. He had also gained national recognition as a writer through publication of his Civil War poems, most notably those that had captured the essence of the nation’s mourning after the death of Abraham Lincoln: the popular “O Captain! My Captain!” and the hallmark “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Living in Washington, DC, at the time, he had no intention of making humble Camden, an extended neighborhood of the larger Philadelphia across the Delaware River, his permanent home. Although he himself was ill, he journeyed north to visit his ailing mother, then staying with brother and Civil War veteran George Whitman. A few days after arriving, his mother succumbed to heart failure and passed away. Depressed and sick with paralysis, he ended up prolonging his visit. Eventually, he made the decision to remain in Camden for the rest of his life.

Whitman once remarked, “Camden was originally an accident but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden! It has brought me blessed returns.” The city was well suited to him. It reflected much of what Whitman embodied in his democratic poetry: a bustling and growing place, full of life and activity, and only a ferry’s ride away from the more cosmopolitan Philadelphia. Making Camden his home meant Whitman could be connected to everything he liked about city living yet be close to the rural environment he loved—an environment that abounded in late 19th-century Southern New Jersey.

During his stay there, he remained surprisingly mobile, traveling and visiting friends in other cities, states, and Canada, and even traveling to give lectures on one of his favorite topics, Abraham Lincoln. Although never fully recovering from his stroke of January 22, 1873, he surprisingly bounced back to enjoy, for the most part, his final years and doing what he did best—absorbing his surroundings and engaging in his love of writing.

In 1884, a significant event took place for the old poet. George and his wife decided to leave Camden and move to the more rural Burlington, New Jersey. When asked to come along, Walt declined and decided to stay and purchase a home at 328 Mickle Street, today’s historic site located on what is now Mickle Boulevard. Gone are the houses across the street, now replaced by a bunker-like prison. Gone are the steam locomotives, replaced by a light rail line. Gone are the industries and ferries of old, replaced by attractions such as Adventure Aquarium, an entertainment center, and The Battleship New Jersey. A new smaller ferry now brings visitors from Philadelphia to Camden to see these attractions. If you look down the river, you’ll see the bridge that bears his name. Despite the dramatic changes the 20th century brought to Camden, his little wooden “shanty,” as Walt called it, remains much like it was during his time.

A visit to today’s historic site evokes memories of past visits and pilgrimages of those who came to see the aging poet in his final years. Those friends who would travel to Mickle Street, some from as far away as Europe, would often find themselves engaging the poet in deep conversation. One such friend and visitor,

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Horace Logo Traubel, would come to enjoy immensely his discussions with Walt and, after being prompted by his fiancée and later wife, Anne, recorded his conversations with the aging philosopher-poet. A young burgeoning writer himself, Horace was taken in by Walt’s recollections of the past and his masterwork, Leaves of Grass. Horace later dedicated his life to getting the word out about Whitman with his multivolume With Walt Whitman in Camden, which offers detailed descriptions of his talks with the author over the final four years of Whitman’s life in his house on Mickle Street.

In many ways, the Mickle Street house exists today as a testimony to Traubel’s love for Whitman and dedication to his memory, a place to come and connect the man to his writing. As early as October of 1892, only months after Whitman’s death in March, Traubel was seeking support to make the Mickle Street house a shrine to the author. Although initially unsuccessful, he laid the foundation for future initiatives to save and preserve the house. His creation of the Walt Whitman Fellowship, a group of Whitman friends and devotees, kept the poet’s memory alive and eventually led to the house being acquired and set aside as a literary shrine in 1921 after Traubel’s death in 1919. The group, now under the name the Walt Whitman Association, still plays a major role in ensuring the preservation of the house and Whitman’s legacy.

During his time at Mickle Street, Whitman worked on finalizing his last edition of Leaves of Grass, commonly referred to as the “Deathbed Edition” of 1891-92. In it, he concludes with two annexes of poetry, “Sands at Seventy” and “Good-Bye My Fancy,” and the prose piece “A Backward Glance o’er TraveI’d Roads.” Within “Sands at Seventy,” he sends us a message from the past, hinting at an answer for those visiting his Mickle Street home today searching for the meaning of his poems: To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty Ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt—to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

Whitman’s final years at the Mickle Street home in Camden were a culmination of his own past experiences and a coming together of his final thoughts and words. Today, the historic site remains, as it was in Whitman’s time, a humble destination offering visitors a look into the life of America’s “Poet of Democracy.”

Leo D. Blake Curator Walt Whitman House State Historic Site

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JOHN GUTOSKEY Chant of Lovers, 2009 Photo: Patrick Young

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Artists and Works

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LEWIS COLBURN AND MARK STOCKTON ‘There are a dozen of me afloat’

“Once, looking at the hopeless clutter of photographs, unable to identify the dates and circumstances of many of them, Whitman lamented, ‘I have been photographed to confusion….

I’ve been taken and taken beyond count.’ Stumbling upon photos of himself he had forgotten had been taken, he joked, ‘I meet new Walt Whitmans every day.

There are a dozen of me afloat. I don’t know which Walt Whitman I am.’”

— Ed Folsom and Ted Genoways, from “‘This Heart’s Geography’s Map’: The Photographs of Walt Whitman”

Walt Whitman did contain multitudes. He published six American editions of Leaves of Grass in his lifetime (from 1855-1892). The final version in 1891-92 is considered the “Deathbed” edition, as Whitman passed away in 1892.

For nearly the last twenty years of his life, Whitman resided in Camden, NJ, across the Delaware river from Philadelphia. Many admirers and artists made the crossing to visit Whitman, sharing time with America’s unofficial Poet Laureate as he held daily conversations in his rocking chair in the front parlor.

As Whitman’s life drew to a close, many of his visitors tried to record and memorialize the poet. These efforts ranged from Horace Traubel’s four years of diary entries recording the poet’s daily life to paintings and sculptures by Thomas Eakins and William O’Donovan to photographs and plaster casts of Whitman’s dead body made by Eakins and Samuel Murray. These death casts are preserved in the libraries of Harvard and Princeton.

Whitman himself participated in creating this mythology, even planning the design of his tomb based on an iconic William Blake print.

Acknowledging this lineage, Mark Stockton and Lewis Colburn have created their first collaborative installation based on the images and artifacts of Walt Whitman’s last days in Camden. Referencing ephemera and photographs from this era, and utilizing 3-D scans made from the casts of Whitman’s body on his deathbed, the artists present a contemplative tableau. Their re-created objects and images become a kind of compilation or archive, revisiting the many previous attempts to honor Whitman. The installation partially re-creates a room from Whitman’s house in Camden, including elements such as Whitman’s rocking chair and the fireplace from his living room.

This project combines both drawing and sculpture (Stockton works primarily in drawing, while Colburn works in sculpture) and considers how methods of re-creating an artifact or image can shift its status as a carrier of meaning. The artists have been inspired by the many reflections of Whitman adrift in the contemporary creative landscape, as well as the efforts made to record and memorialize Whitman at the end of his life.

“If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.”

—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 20

LEWIS COLBURN AND MARK STOCKTON There Are a Dozen of Me Afloat (detail), 2019

PAUL CAVA Children of Adam

When invited by the German publishing house Galerie Vevais to undertake a book project, I immediately thought of pairing my art with Whitman’s erotic poems from the “Children of Adam” sequence in Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s theme was the male and female liberated, naked in every sense and meaning, rejoicing in the possibilities of life and in the shameless glorification of the body. I’ve always felt an artistic rapport with the great man’s poems.

It is important to note that my artwork was created well before the invitation from the publisher to work on a book project together. My work was not made to illustrate, but rather as a sensual declaration of human love and joy, stemming from the same life force, I believe, that exists in Whitman’s poems.

My collages and montages are constructed through juxtaposition where I invite the viewer to consider images—relative and distant—through association. This technique is not unlike literary metaphor where the reader makes a leap to connect the dots—another bridge between the literary and the visual.

This may appear to be an untraditional approach to meaning but it is the feelings evoked by visual art that cause meaning to occur, not the other way around. I hope my work presents additional opportunities to imagine, to dream, and to make that leap alongside the spiritual sensuality and joyfulness in Whitman’s poems.

This is a time of myriad questions about the past, the present, and the future of our society, about the purpose and value of art, about seeking truth in art in a time of careless, irresponsible, immoral leadership.

Indeed, it is a challenging time to be an artist, to be human and compassionate, to stand strong for what is right and just, to trust our better angels and be ever strong in our resistance to what is vile and wrong.

I’ve come to believe that man’s natural state of being is a sexual state in the broadest sense of the term.

We are born into this world with the biological imperative to procreate. Eros, love, is the driving force in life and in my art.

“If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,” Whitman declared in “I Sing the Body Electric.” In the final section of that poem he enumerates the parts, including the sexual parts, of a man’s and woman’s body, and then concludes the entire poem with these words: “O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, / O I say now these are the soul!”

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PAUL CAVA Denise (Map-Red), 2003

JOHN GIANNOTTI Following Walt

I’ve always been tied to Whitman, both geographically and spiritually. The geographic tie, to be sure, is merely coincidental, yet I’ve always thought of it as somehow symbolic. Whitman spent most of his life in three specific areas separated by no more than 150 miles. Those three areas are Suffolk County, Long Island, then Brooklyn, New York, and, finally, Camden, New Jersey. He was born near Huntington, a hamlet in the middle of Long Island, moved to Brooklyn during his formative writing years, and spent the last 14 years of his life in and around Camden. By happenstance or fate, I did the same.

The spiritual tie cannot be measured in miles, but it is so much more important, for Whitman was the major literary presence of the two regions where I have spent my adult life, Long Island and South Jersey.

Therefore, he was central to my early education (we studied him in high school almost as a “local” poet) and again in my later years in the Camden area where his presence is palpable, and I’m not talking about a bridge! No, his presence is palpable because those of us who care about such things feel the power of his words on the street where he lived, inside his home now known as the Walt Whitman House, and even in the glade in Harleigh Cemetery where his self-designed tomb welcomes devotees daily.

But most palpable for me are the lyrical words he placed on paper. They have always touched me deeply, and it was no coincidence that I used one of his most beautiful passages, the song of the hermit thrush, from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” in the eulogy I gave for my dad in 1982, for it gave me comfort in my time of despair as it did for Whitman in his sorrow over the death of Lincoln.

In 1989, I decided that Camden needed a monument to celebrate the life and work of the poet. I knew that I must create a larger-than-life-sized bronze, and I already knew the pose. In the Camden County Historical Society archives, I found a lovely photograph of him seated in a photographer’s studio (most likely on Market Street in Philadelphia) showing him holding aloft a papier-mâché prop, a butterfly. I knew immediately that the butterfly was the perfect metaphor. What wonder of nature could better symbolize his love of the pastoral and the humane?

So, in early 1989, I marched into the office of then Mayor Randy Primas, presented my sketches, and explained that I would donate my time to create a Whitman statue for the city. He would need to cover only the cost of the actual bronze casting—$12,000. His enthusiasm was immediate and genuine, and I walked out of that office with a commitment in hand. It was time to get to work. With the help of several students, the clay model was finished in one consuming semester and later cast in bronze. That first casting now stands in the Children’s Garden in Camden. Years later, I produced a larger version of the sculpture, the one that now stands in front of the Rutgers-Camden Campus Center.

Five castings of Whitman now exist. One is in a sculpture park at Soka University in Japan, but I am happy to report that four of them are within that 150-mile Whitman geographic circle mentioned above. Two are in Huntington, NY, his birthplace, and two in Camden, NJ, where he was laid to rest.

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JOHN GIANNOTTI Whitman's Grave Marker, 1991

JOHN GUTOSKEY Whitman’s Men

Like many people of my generation, my first exposure to Walt Whitman’s poetry was in high school English classes covering American literature where we read “Song of Myself” or “I Sing the Body Electric.”

Of course, in the 1970’s, no mention was ever made of Whitman’s homosexuality or of the overt homoeroticism in many sections of Leaves of Grass. There was no discussion of how sections of the original unedited first edition caused such outrage when they were published that they were edited out of subsequent editions. (Oscar Wilde’s “A Picture of Dorian Grey” got the same heteronormative treatment in my high school English class as well, with no discussion of the homosexuality so central to the story!)

I became re-acquainted with Leaves of Grass when I was given a copy of the unedited Calamus Poems (taken from the 1860 edition). This was in the mid 1990’s, just after the height of the AIDS epidemic—a time when, like many gay men, I was experiencing a lot of loss and grief in my life. In my studio practice, I was looking for ways to respond to all that I was thinking, feeling, and experiencing. When I began reading these poems, I was struck by how hopeful, inclusive, and positive they are, and how Whitman expressed and celebrated man’s desire for his fellow man with such unabashed eroticism, heartfelt emotion, and joy.

He also made room for sadness, longing, and grief. He calls for all men to love each other openly and freely and to use this affection to heal the country and make us all whole again. This was an idea that I needed to hear at that particular time in my life.

As I kept reading and re-reading these poems, I found myself making notes, flagging pages, underlining phrases, and marking up the margins with pencil. I was struck by the beauty of the images that Whitman created through language. The poems are full of compassion and kindness, and they are just so gorgeous.

They touched my heart at a time when I was feeling raw and overwhelmed with sadness and despair. They were a tonic for my grieving soul. They gave me hope.

I decided that I wanted to take the Calamus Poems into my studio and respond to the poems visually. I did not want to recreate the poems line for line, but instead wanted to have a conversation with these poems (and Walt) from the point of view of a gay man in the 21st century having just lived through the epic loss and death brought on by the AIDS epidemic. I felt that because of Whitman’s time nursing the wounded and dying soldiers during the Civil War that his experience resonated with the AIDS era when so many gay men were sick and dying.

Much of my work is based in collage and assemblage—mixed media combined with found objects and paper ephemera. I spend a fair amount of time scavenging for materials at flea markets, estate sales, thrift stores, antique malls, garage sales, and eBay. I have a collection of vintage photographs and tintypes of men in pairs or groups in which the men are showing each other physical affection—such as holding hands, hugging, heads leaning on shoulders, arms draped over shoulders & necks, etc. I began with these vintage photographs as my starting point for my series, “Whitman’s Men.” Many of these images have been scanned and then digitally altered and reprinted on various kinds of paper. I then combined these with found objects and other vintage paper ephemera to create a series of visual poems or “Calamus shrines” housed in vintage boxes. These pieces became a way for me to address the loss and grief I had experienced due to the AIDS epidemic, as well as a way to restore hope and my faith in mankind.

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JOHN GUTOSKEY The Body Electric, 2009 Photo: Patrick Young

CAROLINE CARLSMITH

As a visual artist and writer, I explore how humans use art, science, language, and ritual to push past bodily boundaries and engage with distant figures and worlds. From text, drawing, installation, video, and sculpture, I build viewing platforms for landscapes of loss, desire, and dreams of life beyond death. In past works I have focused on historical figures, polymorphic materials, and movements from transcendentalism to transhumanism, to investigate mortality, its discontents, and ultimately why we make art.

My artistic engagement with Whitman originates in his poem “Calamus 45,” first published in 1860, and the final poem in his homoerotic “Calamus” cluster. Here, as elsewhere in his oeuvre, Whitman solicits the far-future reader to imagine – to believe – that the poet is present in the moment of reading, and is their lover. These incantatory performative utterances occur often in Whitman’s writing, and describe a fantasy of textual afterlife made manifest through eroticized reading. Whitman the man may be gone, indeed must be gone, but Whitman the figure hopes to live forever: all he needs is a willing body to snatch. Curious, I began to explore ways one might take Whitman up on his offer. I wanted to know what it would mean for Whitman’s reader to say “you are now with me” in response to his “I am now with you.” What might be the consequences, the struggles, the possibilities of such an experiment? By attempting to perform a romantic relationship with a long dead poet as a cipher for the longings and limits inherent in artistic expression, I hoped to foreground the distances between individuals as they are distorted and permuted by inevitably inadequate systems of meaning.

Imitating the fallacies of language (as well as Whitman himself), I simultaneously obfuscated and earnestly staged an emotional exchange. In pieces like the twinned text series Lorum Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet and Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself, the Calamus drawing, Song of Myselves, or the ongoing seven-part installation I Am Now With You, I encoded and transmuted Whitman’s “Calamus” cluster as well as the seven published iterations of the poem eventually titled “Song of Myself.” These reorganizations of Whitman’s words employed permeable or nonsensical encryptions such as Lorem Ipsum (a meaningless filler language resembling Latin), adherences to word count, data-visualization tools, and hypothetical games as both constraints and armatures upon which to construct meaning.

Other works, such as the no longer extant Equal Daughters, Equal Sons, built a palimpsest of loss. Produced in an edition of three, the silent wax cylinders – based on another lost wax cylinder containing a voice that might have been Whitman’s – disappeared and burned in a house fire, and are now only ghosts of a ghost that was mine of a ghost that might have been his. Perhaps we are together in our mutual absence.

These projects are a romance in which the boundaries between parties (of time, space, sexual preference, agency, language) are tested, ultimately foregrounding the power and pathos of reaching. The word was Whitman’s medium as a poet, a printer, and a necromancer, and it remains the most productive place to confront the spectral authorial figure. The imperative driving my work originates in this specter, who insists that “who touches this book touches a man.” As the distance stretches between my own body and the works I made as bowers for Whitman and I to co-inhabit, I begin to sense two ghosts in them. Be not too certain but they are now with you.

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CAROLINE CARLSMITH Calamus, 2012

PAUL J. STANKARD Seeing Leaves of Glass

When I entered middle age, I hit a glass wall. I felt that I was losing my creative mojo. My work was not evolving, and I felt the need for more spontaneity. Feeling frustrated, I started to write poetry, seeing it as a medium to meet my creative need.

I was no stranger to poetry. As a child, I was a poor reader; I’m a dyslexic, a term that was barely known at that time. But my mother, who didn’t understand why I was such a poor reader, tutored me daily through my middle-school years. Books were a struggle for me, but when Mom switched to poetry, it was fun. She would read the poem first, and, with my good memorization skills, the words, rhythms, and meter clicked with me, and I—for perhaps the first time—felt that I was comprehending written expression, an idea compressed into words.

Three decades later, those boyhood lessons floated back into my creative consciousness. Feeling stymied with the glass, I decided to write a poem, which led to a series of poems paying homage to native plants.

B RAMBLE Fertile decay nourishes arched stems, green growth; blossoms soften thickets hooked thorns; showy stamens satisfy June insects; hairy drupelets swell to juicy blackberry.

The challenge of painting a word-picture paying homage to a flowering plant had an appeal to me. Interestingly enough, my verbal interpretation of the plant paralleled my interpretation of a crafted plant in glass, even though I had no idea at the time how to articulate this mode of expression in my art.

As an adult, I began a journey of self-education by visiting museums and galleries. I wanted to acquire a broad education that would enable me to become more than a pair of hands; I wanted to become a well-rounded person in ways that would bring artistic maturity to my work, so I began listening to books on tapes.

One of those tapes was Walt Whitman: A Life, a biography of the poet by Justin Kaplan. I was introduced to an unusual person of heroic stature—someone who was largely self-taught. Whitman, I realized, to my delight, expressed nature in an intimate way that would come to influence my work.

As I re-read my favorite Whitman poems, I noted in many instances that he went beyond realism, toward the spiritual realm. His words challenged me to attempt the same journey: to go beyond crafting realistic botanical models.

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PAUL STANKARD Morning Bouquet with Figures, 2008 Photo: Jeff DiMarco

The influence of Whitman’s words, coupled with my respect for his genius, led me to display excerpts of his poetry on the walls in my studio and exhibitions. Whitman was my guide through walks in the woods, and Leaves of Grass became my textbook.

I was touched by the abstract idea of how Whitman portrayed a morning glory in “Song of Myself.” He elevates a simple flower to a spiritual level: “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

Whitman’s poetry led me to pursue a convergence of writing, teaching, and glass art-making. I hadn’t been to art school and didn’t share the often-exotic influences referenced by my contemporaries. But Whitman infused me with confidence. His celebration of the ordinary as extraordinary gave me pride in my celebration of the familiar things into crafted glass components: blossoms, bees, roots and leaves encased in glass.

During his time, Whitman thought that his poetry was under-appreciated and that his worth would only be understood by future generations. Similarly, this idea of spiritually connecting to the future, long after I die, motivated me to write this poem, which I offer as homage to Walt Whitman.

R eceive this glass it holds my memories crafted blossoms suspended in stillness to be pollinated by your sight anticipating your touch through time.

Happy 200th Birthday, Walt Whitman.

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PAUL STANKARD Morning Bouquet with Figures (detail), 2008 Photo: Jeff DiMarco

ALLEN CRAWFORD

Screenprints from Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself (Tin House Books, 2014)

Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is an illustrated interpretation of the 1855 version of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” the centerpiece of his great work Leaves of Grass. Every part of the book is drawn by hand, including the forward and the publisher’s credits. In the process, Whitman’s sixty-page poem has been protracted into 234 illustrated pages. It took me fourteen months to complete. My setup in the basement was simple: two drafting tables, tracing paper, pens, vellum, and a light box. Each two-page spread started as a thumbnail, then worked into a full-size pencil layout. The pencil art was then inked up, scanned, cleaned up digitally, and edited before being saved as final art. It took about eight to ten hours to complete each two-page spread. By my rough estimate, I devoted about 2,560 hours to this book.

I’ve tried to make the vigor of “Song of Myself” tangible by liberating the words from their blocks of verse.

This allows the lines to flow freely about the page, like a stream or a bustling city crowd. The text and imagery in this book are intended to be in keeping with Whitman's unburnished sensibility.

The two-page spreads are the framework of the book. To remain visually coherent, each spread had to have a focal point—a subject, theme, or mood—so I broke down “Song of Myself” into verse clusters that could stand on their own in each spread. When the theme or subject changes, so does the page.

Whitman Illuminated is meant to be both viewed and read. Its small size and graphic density, combined with the non-linear arrangements of text, invite the reader to traverse Whitman’s poem in digressive ways.

It compels the reader to slow down, turn the small book in their hands, and ponder the images and text.

I wasn’t interested in merely reflecting Whitman’s words. Such a project would be pointless. “Song of Myself” does not need to be bolstered by imagery: the sturdy, pungent, oratorical passages stand on their own. Because of this, I wanted to create a parallel visual narrative to Whitman’s words, forming an interpretive gap in which the reader—or viewer—may travel.

For me, Whitman’s insights often outshine his poetics, particularly his exaltations of the body and of the democratic self, which remain radical even today. “Song of Myself” is saturated with tenderness and empathy, in part because it doesn’t shrink from death and sorrow. I can’t imagine a better time to revive Whitman’s humane vision of the American soul than right now.

In the beginning of “Song of Myself,” Whitman holds a blade of glass. By the end of “Song of Myself,” he’s become the grass. The “I” in “Song of Myself” expands as the poem progresses--until it disperses, becoming everything, including us.

It’s no accident that “Song of Myself” begins with “I” and ends with “you.” By celebrating himself, Whitman celebrates us all.

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ALLEN CRAWFORD

Babe of the Grass, 2014

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES CAROLINE CARLSMITH is an American visual artist and writer currently living and working in New York City. She completed her BFA in Studio Art and BA in Visual Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and her MFA in Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University in 2014.

Carlsmith has exhibited her work domestically and internationally, including at The Hills Aesthetic Center, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Flux Factory, and Blue Star Contemporary. She has been artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, SÍM Reykjavik, Residency 108, SOMA Mexico City, and is currently a 2019 BRIC Media Arts Fellow. She has been the recipient of numerous grants, including the CAAP Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts Grant from Northwestern University, and is also a founding board member of the interdisciplinary residency program Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange.

— PAUL CAVA grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He received a BA from Richmond College of the City University of NY in 1972 and an MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1975. After graduate school Paul moved to Philadelphia where he continued his art practice and began to exhibit; he also began to deal privately in 19th and 20th century photographs. In 1979 he opened Paul Cava Gallery where important regional and international exhibitions of paintings, prints and photographs were held until the gallery closed in 1999. He currently is a private dealer in vintage and contemporary photographs.

Paul received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Artist’s Fellowships in 1981 and 1999, and has exhibited his artwork in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe. A broad range of private and public institutions, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Princeton University Museum of Art, and The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, has collected his work. His art also has been featured in many publications, including Eyemazing Magazine and Das Magazin, and in 2005 Galerie Vevais published Walt Whitman / Paul Cava, Children of Adam from Leaves of Grass, a bold union of Whitman’s erotic poems and Paul’s art work. The most recent one-person exhibitions of his work have been held at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe (2018) and Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia (2018). Paul was also included in the group exhibition Whitman/Alabama at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019).

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ALLEN CRAWFORD is a graphic artist and writer. He and his wife Susan founded the design and illustration studio Plankton Art Co. in 1996. Their studio’s most notable project to date is the collection of 400 species identification illustrations that are on permanent display at the American Museum of Natural History’s Milstein Hall of Ocean Life in New York. Crawford wrote, designed, and illustrated The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2006 and optioned for film

by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. His award-winning book, Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself, is an illustrated, hand-lettered, 256-page edition of Walt Whitman’s epic poem. Published

by Tin House in 2014, the book has won wide acclaim, including a Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators in New York. Whitman Illuminated is currently in its third printing. Crawford and his work have appeared in Communication Arts, American Illustration, The New York Times, Interview, Orion, Frieze, Vice, L’Uomo Vogue, Art in America, The Type Directors Club, and The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. A lifelong amateur naturalist and conservationist, he spent seven years assisting filmmaker David Scott Kessler with his award-winning experimental documentary film, The Pine Barrens. He and his wife live in Mount Holly, NJ. — Born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, LEWIS COLBURN holds a BA in studio art and Russian language from St. Olaf College and an MFA in sculpture from Syracuse University. He has participated in numerous residency programs, including the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Vermont Studio Center, SculptureSpace, Franconia Sculpture Park, and RAIR in Philadelphia. Colburn’s work has been shown internationally and throughout the United States, at such venues as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA, South China Normal University in Guangzhou, China, and the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, CA. His works have been featured in Sculpture magazine, as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer. Colburn is a member of NAPOLEON, an artist-run project space in Philadelphia’s Rollins Building, and he teaches at Drexel University, where he is an assistant professor.

— JOHN GIANNOTTI is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University where he was a faculty member at the Camden and New Brunswick campuses from 1968 to 2001. He was the first Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in Camden (Art, Music, and Theater). In 1985 he developed both the International Studies Program (now Global Studies) and the Computer Graphics/Computer Animation program. He served as Resident Director of the Rutgers Junior Year Program in Florence, Italy, and received the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Outstanding Faculty Award. He has exhibited his work world-wide, including solo shows in the US, England, Italy, Australia, and Japan. Giannotti has created five monumental bronzes of Walt Whitman with Butterfly that now stand in Camden, NJ, Tokyo, Japan, and Huntington, NY (at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Museum). In the Delaware Valley, Giannotti’s public art is on display at the Lakeland Fire Training Center in Blackwood (Fireman monument), the Chews Landing Fire Company (“The Rescue” monument), Harleigh Cemetery (Illustration on granite marker for Walt Whitman’s tomb), Cooper Hospital (Waugh/Coriell Portraits), Temple University (the Temple Owl) and Haddonfield, NJ (The Little Artist and Hadrosaurus Foulkii bronzes). He is currently the owner of Giannotti Studios in Haddonfield.

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JOHN GUTOSKEY is an artist, designer, printmaker, and collector living and working in Ann Arbor, Michigan. John received his BFA in theater design with a minor in sculpture from Webster University in St. Louis. He earned his MFA from the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design, where he also completed a certificate in LGBTQ Studies. Early in his career, John worked as a costume designer and as a specialist in costume crafts on productions in New York City and across the US in theater, opera, dance, film, and television. He has taught classes in millinery, mask making, and fabric dyeing at the University of Michigan in the Department of Theater. John has shown his work across the US, including the Detroit Institute of Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis Art Center, Kinsey Institute, Ella Sharp Museum, and in galleries and art fairs in Chicago, NYC, Detroit, Toledo, Atlanta, Houston, Austin, New Orleans, St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Ann Arbor. His series of monoprints honoring the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, “PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies,” won the prize for Best Juried 2D at Artprize X 2018 and the Alpha Omega Award for Religious Art 2018. John is the owner of JG Studio and the A2 Print Studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

— Internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the studio glass movement, PAUL J. STANKARD is considered a living master who translates nature in glass. His work is represented in over 80 museums around the world. Stankard is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary doctorate degrees. He most recently received the Masters of the Medium award from Smithsonian’s The James Renwick Alliance and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Glass Art Society. He is an Artist-in-Residence and Honorary Professor at Salem Community College in southern New Jersey. Stankard has authored three books: an autobiography in 2007 titled No Green Berries or Leaves; an educational resource in 2014 titled Spark the Creative Flame; and, most recently, Studio Craft as Career: A Guide to Achieving Excellence in Art-making.

— MARK STOCKTON is a Philadelphia-based artist. His drawings have been shown both nationally and internationally with exhibitions in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, London, and Beijing. Originally from the West Coast, he received his BFA from Oregon State University in 1996 and his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Syracuse University in 2000. Since 2009, Mark has worked with the independent arts organization Vox Populi as both a contributing artist and as a board member. His work is in many private and public collections, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the West Collection. He currently teaches design and drawing at Drexel University. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Cindy, his two kids, Otto and Iona, and his dog, Elsie.

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST CAROLINE CARLSMITH

PAUL CAVA

Calamus, 2012 ink on paper 204" x 37"

Legs, 2000 Collage 22"½ x 15"

Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 33, 2012 Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 35, 2012 Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 36, 2012 Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 37, 2012 Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 42, 2012 Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet: Calamus 45, 2012 Inkjet print 8" x 11" each

Sexual Nature #10, 2003 7" x 17 5/8" Archival pigment print

Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 33, 2012 Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 35, 2012 Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 36, 2012 Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 37, 2012 Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 42, 2012 Nobody Loves Pain Itself For Itself: Calamus 45, 2012 Inkjet print 8 "½x 11" each

Sexual Nature (Blue #5), 2003 Archival pigment print 6 "½x 17" ¾

Song of Myselves, 2013 Paper Dimension variable

Christ/Denise, 2003 Archival pigment print 12 1/2" x 11 3/4" ¾

Sexual Nature #11, 2003 6" x 17" ½ Archival pigment print Man/Woman, 1998 Archival pigment print 15" x 12" Woman/Man, 1998 Archival pigment print 15" x 12"

Denise (Map-Red), 2003 Archival pigment print 11 5/8" x 11" ¼ Eden (large version), 2003 Archival pigment print 17" x 17" ½ Venus/Ember/Ferris/Christ, 2003 Archival pigment print 9" x 18"

LEWIS COLBURN AND MARK STOCKTON There Are a Dozen of Me Afloat, 2019 Aluminum, plaster, concrete, poplar, plywood and pine 84" x 192" x 120"

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ALLEN CRAWFORD Babe of the Grass, 2014 Screen print 18" x 24" Frog, 2014 Screen print 18" x 24"

As Of A Dream, 2011 Mixed-media assemblage 54" x 15" ½x 3" ½ Press Forth, Red Drops, 2019 Mixed-media assemblage 55" x 24" x 3"½

Multitudes, 2014 Screen print 18" x 24"

PAUL J. STANKARD

JOHN GIANNOTTI

Honey Bees with a Honeycomb, 2018 Glass 4"

Study for Whitman with Butterfly, 1988 Mixed media 40" x 30" Darrel Ford as Walt Whitman, 2012 Mixed media 20" x 14" Bust of Walt Whitman, 1987 Hydrostone 16 x 18 x 12 Courtesy of Chris Perks Whitman’s Grave Marker, 1991 Black granite 38 x 24 x 16

JOHN GUTOSKEY Chant of Lovers, 2009 Mixed-media assemblage 69" x 16" x 3" The Body Electric, 2009 Mixed-media assemblage 53" x 14" x 2" ½ The Institution of the Dear Love of Comrades, 2009 Mixed-media assemblage 55" x 13"¼ x 3" ¼ In The Stillness, 2011 Mixed-media assemblage 62" x 19" x 4" ½ 40

Moss in an Orb, 2009 Glass 6"

Mountain Laurel and Blueberries, 2018 Glass 4" Homage to Walt Whitman, 2004 Glass 2" x 3" x 3" Morning Bouquet with Figures, 2008 Glass 6" Diptych with Mask, Flowers, and Insects Glass 6" x 5" ½x 3" ½ Hairy Wild Bees with Prickly Fruit, 2017 Glass 4" ½x 3" x 3"

OBJECTS FROM THE WALT WHITMAN HOUSE COLLECTION LOUIS MAYER

WALT WHITMAN

Bronze Bust of Walt Whitman, 1929 21" ½x 10" ¼ (at base)

Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition 11" ¼x 8" x 3/8" Self-published Rome Brothers, printers, Brooklyn, NY Inscribed: From Walt Whitman

HANNAH CUTLER GROVES Whitman on the Camden Ferryboat Wenonah, 1940 Oil on canvas 43" x 42" ¼ (framed)

SAMUEL MURRAY Casting of WW’s Left Hand, 1892 Plaster 5" x 6" x 8" ½ Carved underneath by Samuel Murray – “Murray 1892”

UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER Walt Whitman 1848, c 1935 Photographic print from original daguerreotype 7"½ x 6" (framed)

OTHER WORKS Original, in the hand of Dr. Alexander McAlister Walt Whitman Death Notice March 26th, 1892 25" x 22" (framed)

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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—CAMDEN Phoebe Haddon Chancellor Howard J. Marchitello Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

STEDMAN GALLERY Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts Cyril Reade Director Noreen Scott Garrity Associate Director for Education Nancy Maguire Associate Director for Exhibitions Carmen Pendleton Community & Artist Programs Manager Miranda Powell Arts Education & Community Arts Program Assistant Zulma Rodriguez Administrative Assistant

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMMUNICATION Tyler Hoffman Professor and Exhibition Curator

Catalog Design GDLOFT

Rutgers—Camden Center for the Arts exhibitions and education programs are made possible in part by an award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; Subaru of America Foundation; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and other generous contributors.

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STEDMAN GALLERY 44