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Beth Ames Swartz: The Word in Paint
Beth Ames Swartz - photo
courtesy West Valley Art Museum
The painting exhibition,
entitled The Word in Paint, occurs in conjunction
with the publication by of a book by the same name.
The Word in Paint is the result of a creative
collaboration between the visual artist and the poet.
Beth Ames Swartz, a nationally known American painter,
was inspired by two of China’s most revered poets from
the eighth century, Du Fu (a.k.a. Tu Fu) and Li Bai
(a.k.a. Li Po), to create a series of paintings entitled
The Thirteenth Moon.
The career of Swartz
spans fifty years, includes a 2002 retrospective at
Phoenix Art Museum as well as receiving the highest
award in the State of Arizona for an artist (the
Governor’s Arts Award), and enjoys other professional
achievements that include a solo exhibition at The
Jewish Museum, NY, over eighty other one-person museum
and gallery shows as well as three books and many
catalogs, articles and videos documenting her
accomplishments.
Painting by Beth Ames Swartz -
photo courtesy West Valley Art Museum
The collaboration began
when the Virginia G Piper Center for Creative Writing at
Arizona State University hosted a delegation from the
University of Sichuan in Chengdu, China. The Center’s
Global Studies Initiative introduced the Chinese
delegation to the work of Swartz. Members of the
delegation were excited about the cultural and artistic
dialogue in Swartz’s work and enthusiastic about the
possibilities of exploring the creative expression of
community between ASU and Sichuan University through
visual and poetic art.
Rhodes then sought the
involvement of poets in the MFA Creative Writing Program
at Arizona State University who would be teaching at the
University of Sichuan as part of the Piper Global
Studies Initiative. Professor Beckian Fritz Goldberg,
faculty member of ASU’s MFA Creative Writing Program,
two students from the Program (Iliana Rocha and Leah
Soderberg), and Visiting Faculty John Sparrow from Royal
Holloway College in England, viewed an exhibit of
Swartz's paintings in Scottsdale, Arizona. In response,
the poets wrote original poems based on particular
works; The Word in Paint reproduces eight of
these poems.
The book, The Word in
Paint, also includes an essay of the art of Beth
Ames Swartz by internationally known art critic, Donald
Kuspit, Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Additionally, The Word in Paint contains essays
by John Rothschild on the Tang Dynasty and on the art of
Beth Ames Swartz as well as an extensive Bibliography on
books in English on the poetry of Du Fu and Li Bai.
West Valley Art Museum is
open 10 AM to 4 PM Tuesday through Sunday. The Museum is
located at West Bell Road and 114th Avenue. With nine
exhibition galleries, a Museum Store, and regularly
scheduled education programs, the Museum welcomes all
visitors. There is an admission charge for non-members.
$7 adults, $2 students, ages 5 and under are free.
The exhibition continues through May 18, 2009. For
further information see our web site www.wvam.org
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