MICHELLE O'CONNOR

We discovered Michelle O'Connor about 15 years ago during one of San Francisco's Open Studios (where artists opened up their studios to the public throughout the city). We were her first "Collectors" -- I use the term because we would find out later that she treasured being able to say her art is collected. We had visited tons and tons of studios that day and her paintings were our pick; we thought she had such potential and wanted to encourage her. I think she wasn't out of art school yet. For several years, Tom had one of her larger works hanging in his office lobby; apparently she would visit his office lobby (grin) to take photos and look at her painting in such a context she might not have imagined would be possible. 

Perhaps a year or so after we met her, she was riding her bike in San Francisco, got side-swiped by a vehicle and died. Her father came into town to collect her belongings ... including her journal from which, her father would come to share in a telephone call with Tom, she had written about such relishing the idea that "Art Collectors" would appreciate her work and how much she enjoyed seeing her painting in one of San Francisco's skyscrapers. Tears me up even now just to think of her too-short life and the cut-off of potential. I am glad we helped her know that, as an artist, she was valued. May all artists know this about themselves and their works. Michelle O'Connor: R.I.P.

SHARON LOUDEN

I'm delighted to share some of Sharon Louden's art whose work we first discovered over a decade ago. We walked into one of San Francisco's art galleries where we ended up in the back room trawling through their drawers etc. There we found Sharon's evocative marks -- small gestures but whose luminosity lit up the entire gallery. 

Their charisma is probably not captured well by my iPhone camera. But they did first grab our eye for what they visually are ... only then for me to discover and adore that (according to the gallerist) the works were made after Sharon made one of her huge installation works. In other words, while the marks are deceptively simple, the artist found her way to making them only AFTER first making a much larger work (and if you google for images of Sharon's installation works you will find them multi-layered, smart and pleasingly dense, among other things). So I took the artist's process to be like poetry -- that the poetics underlying the minimalist poem can be encyclopedic in attention even as its manifestation might be a small poem. Anyway, even after over a decade, these works continue to delight with their presence -- thank you, Sharon Louden for your intelligent and compelling work:

ROBERT LOWE & V.C. IGARTA

This post combines Robert Lowe and Venancio "V.C." Igarta simply because they are hung next to each other.  Lowe made this 3-women painting that speaks to me as regards the poetry muse, including her multiplicities. Though the iPhone camera can't capture it, the painting's figures are paradoxically solid even as the thinness of each painted layer is discernible ... which I think also says something about the craft of poetry. That's why I put the painting in my writer's studio (tho I don't use the "studio" as the poet's studio isn't a room...wait, that's a different story...anyway...) right next to a portrait that beloved Filipino manong artist V.C. Igarta gift-ed to me. In the background of V.C.'s painting is an abstract figure; I once asked V.C. about it and he replied, "It just surfaced during the painting -- I think it's your Guardian Angel." 

Both paintings hang above kris swords ... which also says something about poetry 

(V.C. Igarta)

(Robert Lowe)

(We actually have a second Robert Lowe painting but that hangs outside the house in my husband's office.)

MANUEL OCAMPO

A painting and a drawing by Manuel Ocampo. Because Manuel Ocampo. Through the years, they remain powerful and compelling ...

The large painting below is owned by someone else but, once, the poet Barbara Jane Reyes and I toasted to it:

ROGER SHIMOMURA

Well,  this a cheerful Holiday painting -- NOT! I'm honored to live with this autobiographical painting by Roger Shimomura, which also is bravura for its Pop Art-oriented approach to the horrific U.S. mistake we know as the country's Japanese internment camp period. A description on the back of the canvas for "DECEMBER 25, 1941 (Christmas) from AN AMERICAN DIARY" says: 

"December 25, 1941 (Seattle) Christmas in the time of war. We spent time at home quietly as all of the family joyfully got together. For this we were all thankful. We had a pleasant Christmas, with Roger as the center of attention."

My heart clenches at the thoughts of how parents must have tried to (psychologically and otherwise) protect their children from what was going on around them ...

ANNE TRUITT

I begin with a close-up of my warrior cat Artemis because she and her sister kitty Scarlet are the reasons why I don't have the Anne Truitt sculpture I would have liked to have in my home; I'm talking about the elegant columns or pillars for which she's known. Had such a sculpture entered our home, our cats would have used them as, yep, scratching posts. But I do have a horizontal sculpture that can be placed on a high shelf far away from cat claws (though you can see how the cat eyes it). The sculpture lies on the bookshelf like both an odalisque and a rectangular slice of the ocean. I love living with an Anne Truitt sculpture because her three journals are arguably my favorite artist diaries, and have inspired several poems.

COLOMBIAN ARTIST

I think of Hyperallergic's article on Matthias Buchinger, an artist born without hands or feet, when I think of this small painting on a glass mirror by a Colombian artist; I can’t decipher his name so I’m just calling him Colombian Artist. He was a street artist we discovered in Bogota when my family was down there for an adoption. He had no hands so he made his paintings with his feet. Our family watched him display his art, then chose one to bring home. I viewed the act as not a mere acquisition of art but a chance to show our child that art is important to our family and that one should support the art(tists) of one’s times. But while painting with one’s feet made the artist interesting, I also like his choice of mirrors as canvases. Because the viewer, while looking at the work, thus also sees a reflection (you see my nosy eyes below). For me, it’s like the gaze looking back at you ...