Tip of the Knife: Tip of the Knife, Issue 6

CONTRIBUTORS

BERND REICHERT

Some of the most beautifully composed visual poetry I’ve seen in a long time, Bernd uses small snippets of letters, words, phrases, shapes, smoothly cut edges, torn edges, overlapping edges, color interactions, even graffiti, all in a state of becoming. Things revolve and burst with pride. Light peeks out, a proud corona of unimaginable temperatures (corona is Latin for ‘crown’, how appropriate). There’s a reason I chose these works to open T of K: joy, strange harmonies, colorful wonders, and skill in arranging, in composing, in seeing.

And there’s a balance here that intoxicates.

BILL CARMEL

Bill has returned from his journey through the desert, where I’m sure he found the mad and fiery glyphs he presents here. Few can understand them until they understand their own hearts and souls, then they speak worlds, and worlds between worlds. The overall shape is a dimension-twisting flame, speaking in burning tongues. The edges, mad with hot colors, excite me, little flares that make my nerve endings vibrate and cry.

I’ve shown paintings many times with Bill; it has been my great pleasure to be on the same wall with him.

JOHN BENNET

These works are like a delicious apple pie- you want to get to the tasty innards but the outside is so luscious you dally and enjoy. The series is made of word/letter blocks in 3 formats. The first is in Spanish with at least one foray into Galician (something like Portuguese, o o o meaning the the the). The second section is fractured letter/words, with ellipses that are to me the graphic equivalent of the attraction of one being for another, or a crazy game of hangman. Section 3, a kind of sound poetry, repeats the external structure (the crust) of 1 and 2 and digs deeper into the beautiful flow of language (the apple filling) in its most immediate form.

So take a big bite, and make sure you get some crust and some filling every time. It’s on the windowsill.

PAUL PACAK

Bimorphic webs, skeins of shadowy agents travelling across Asian-tinged plains. The real world bowing to the Abstract. Wooden walls between realties. Paul’s work is all this and more. I can imagine him taking a walk through our old crumbling hometown, finding himself in the midst of the steel mill ruins, lighting up a place that is seriously headed toward final entropy. His formidable skills take telephone poles, punctuated by rusty metal staples, and transform them into magical totems. Snow, or frost, always known as part of a shaman’s ammunition, become Paul’s weapons.

Sleeping substances awaken, and maybe melt in the sun, but not before they have been captured for us all.

MARILYN R. ROSENBERG

In Frank Stella’s essay ‘Working Space’, he speaks of a new physical world of art, specifically of works that literally come off the wall (or the book, or the screen). These works live ‘in front of themselves’. This is the universe where Marilyn sets up shop, creating new, uber-colored planes, folds and interior spaces. Travelling through these pieces with my inner eye, my third eye, I find paths of furrows, routes of ridges and a swirl of colors that makes me want to see a hundred of them.

Get busy Marilyn.

REED ALTEMUS

Mixing multiple elements, letters, colors, black and white images, and walking a fine line “like a snail on the edge of a straight razor”, as Col. Kurtz says in Apocalypse Now, Reed lives to make a lopsided balance of glorious permutations, abusing language, making it spin and dance. Some pieces emphasize power, like the amazingly hot-colored ‘60ies’. Some have the authority of a crisp graphic bang, where alphabets (‘Mutter’) are born full to bursting . Then there are ‘Cobbing Homage #1’ and ‘NEW16b’, where letters and letter detritus wave goodbye as their body parts head for the singularity. There’s a significance here, deepened by an exciting approach.

From a crown of thorns, to a Communist propaganda poster to an exquisite letter/space bending alien baby, there’s genius to be found everywhere, from Bedlam to the Pearly Gates.

JIM LEFTWICH

Imagine a subatomic world where String Theory describes the actions and interactions of the smallest known features of the eleven dimensional time/space continuum in which we live. Then imagine a visual poet bold enough to enter this quantum world, take the fibers and twist them, fold them, and stain them. This is how we can read Creation, even when there’s nothing there. Especially when there’s nothing there. The way strings meet and intermingle create the laws of our reality. It’s kind of like the junior high dance where an awkward pair of shy lovers discover the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody”.

Strings make music. Imagine the beauty. Jim Leftwich makes music. And you don’t have to imagine that beauty. It’s here in this mag.

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"Beauty will be convulsive or not at all"

Andre Breton

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BERND REICHERT

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soliloquies-5

BILL CARMEL

JOHN BENNETT

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PAUL PACAK