Scrap: On Louise Nevelson was released by Ravenna Press in March 2018 as part of their Pocket Book
Series. These linked prose poems are based on the art and life of this important American
sculptor. Sections appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Ekphrasis, and 22 Magazine. The project received an honorable mention in the Tupelo Press July Open Reading 2015.
"In Scrap, Julie
Gard carries out a necessary expansion of the ekphrastic tradition, not
only entering into Louise Nevelson's artworks with the precise,
feelingful, and articulate response of an ideal viewer but also taking
on the more emotionally fraught question of what it means to be an
artist and a mother, both for Nevelson and herself. It should surprise
no one who has taken on both roles that there are no easy answers, that
the possibility of betrayal of either dedication is always present.
Scrap voices all of these concerns with clarity and with an original
thinking-through that makes the book a pleasure to read."
"Just
as Louise Nevelson organized the chaos of found objects--bowling pins,
winged griffins, tennis rackets, and wooden wheels--into mini-worlds
contained in uniform boxes, Julie Gard's spare yet expansive prose poems
frame one major question. How can a woman be both an artist (or writer)
and a mother? Children and art, Gard writes, demand the same force and
breath. Scrap explores two possible, nuanced answers. In Gard's vision
of Nevelson's kitchen, the artist created dark realizations and potions
of grass and rust and horns --never food or warmth--and sent her young
son away for years. Yet Gard, in considering Nevelson's art and life,
constructs another way: between and despite daily interruptions and
worry, forgotten swimsuits and repacked suitcases, she both cares for
her daughter and writes deeply resonant prose poems, elegant in their
clarity. I am so glad she did."
- Kathleen McGookey, Stay and Whatever Shines
View a slide show on Nevelson's life and sculpture.
