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SAN FRANCISCO — I first discovered about Jen Bervin once I learn Nets (Ugly Duckling, 2003). In that e book, Bervin took 60 of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and erased them till the phrases that had been left (precisely the place they’re within the unique) turned her poem. In distinction to earlier poets, resembling Ronald Johnson and Jonathan Williams, who erased preexisting texts, Bervin didn’t utterly efface her supply. Shakespeare’s poems are nonetheless discernible in mild blue textual content, whereas Bervin’s are in black; readers can actually see the dialogue between the 2 poems. By leaving the supply seen, she acknowledged that a few of her poems would undergo by comparability. That is the alternative of appropriation, a typical postmodern follow. Writing about this work within the afterword to Nets, she said: “After we write poems, the historical past of poetry is with us, pre-inscribed within the white of the web page.”
The second e book I learn was Silk Poems (Nightboat Books, 2017). The poem was printed like a scroll of fabric unfurling throughout the web page; every line of the typed textual content (all caps) was comprised of six letters, comparable to the silkworm’s DNA. Whereas I knew {that a} bodily manifestation of this poem existed, and that Bervin labored in different supplies and made objects, together with artist’s books, I had by no means seen any at this level. I deliberate on visiting her exhibition Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Mirror: Chosen Works (1997–2020) on the College Galleries of Illinois State College (August 15–December 13, 2020), curated by Kendra Paitz, however the pandemic made journey unattainable. I questioned once I would get an opportunity to see a complete present dedicated to the vary of her follow, so I felt very lucky to see the massive exhibition Jen Bervin: Supply, at Catharine Clark Gallery, within the gallery’s newly expanded house.
The exhibition’s 15 works, relationship from 1998 to 2023, embrace artist books; “River” (2006–18), composed of silver foil-stamped fabric sequins sewn collectively; and “Silk Poems” (2016), an set up that contains a video of Bervin’s intensive analysis into silk. What connects these works collectively is her bodily and mental engagement along with her supplies, whether or not embroidering muslin with phrases and marks that correspond to Emily Dickinson’s fascicles (a bunch of 40 self-made small booklets wherein she copied round 800 of her poems), typing up a textual content, or stitching sequins to type a silver, glittering river. In her follow, studying, as an enhanced, hyperconscious exercise, and making turn into inseparable.
One of many hanging issues about Bervin’s work — and that is true of Nets — is her skill to each protect and alter her supply. In doing so, she establishes two dialogues, one with the work and one with the viewer/reader. That is additionally true of early, groundbreaking works by Jasper Johns, resembling “Flag” (1954–55). If we view the encaustic and collage “Flag” or Bervin’s weaving of Dickinson’s fascicles on cotton muslin solely in formal phrases, we miss out on the deeper and more difficult richness of their work, the dialogues they’ve initiated with historical past.
This was my expertise with the group of particular person items collectively titled The Composite Marks of Fascicle, every numbered and dated between 2004 and 2022. Product of cotton and silk thread on cotton batting again with muslin, and measuring 72 by 96 inches, they’re displayed so viewers can see each side.
Throughout Emily Dickinson’s most extraordinary outpouring of poetry (1858–64), which coincided with the Civil Struggle, she copied greater than 800 of her poems into handmade volumes of folded sheets of paper, which she made by stabbing two holes within the papers and tying them collectively. Dickinson made different “signature” marks on these sheets of paper, over which students have puzzled. Her distinctive fascicles are the supply of Bervin’s quirky, mysterious works. From sculptor Roni Horn to Chicago Imagist painter Philip Hanson to poet Susan Howe, Dickinson has served as supply materials for creators — a lot in order that I questioned if something recent may very well be executed. In distinction to different poets and artists, Bervin doesn’t cite, reconfigure, or meditate upon well-known strains and phrases. She is within the marks and dashes that Dickinson used as punctuation, which scholar have speculated as indicating pauses of silence or bridges between sections of a poem.
I believe Bervin desires to counsel the background of the Civil Struggle with out being didactic about it. Cotton was produced within the 15 slave states by almost two million enslaved individuals. Girls made cotton garments in addition to wore cotton clothes. By evoking quilts and bedding, the artist feedback on the function ladies performed on this lengthy, bloody battle that also haunts us. The best way purple threads mark the floor, like cuts and incisions towards a white floor, additional inflect this studying. Dickinson by no means acknowledged the Civil Struggle, nor voiced an opinion on it, slavery, or individuals of shade.
Bervin’s contact relating to these issues is mild. She offers viewers loads of room to replicate upon these connections and silences. Her work is open-ended and resists any reductive or literal studying.
In line with the press launch, the sculpture “River,” which runs throughout the gallery’s uneven ceiling, “imagines an unattainable vantage: the Mississippi River as if seen from the core of the earth, its headwaters, alluvial path, and confluence within the delta stretching throughout 230 curvilinear ft of ceiling and wall.” Strolling beneath the piece and looking out up at it, seeing the sequins glinting and winking within the mild, we’re invited to acknowledge all of the completely different roles the Mississippi River has performed within the historical past of the US. Bervin undermines our snug relationship with rivers, a typical topic, by making viewers lookup moderately than down upon it.
The dimensions of “River” is about at one inch to 1 mile. In “Measure (after Susan Hiller)” (2023), Bervin pays homage to Hiller (1940–2019), the influential US-born British conceptual artist. For “Measure by Measure II” (1993–2012), Hiller burned her work annually and picked up the ashes in glass measuring tubes. Bervin’s work consists of journals she had written between 1992 and 2012, which she burned, containing their ashes in tubes. A phrase from the journal inside is on the outside of every tube.
“Measure (after Susan Hiller)” is much less visually commanding than “River” and Composite Marks of Fascicle. I’m glad about this discrepancy — it implies that Bervin has not figured all of it out but. Every work is completely different, together with her artist books. An unclassifiable artist and a deep reader, she has expanded the notion of what it’s to be a poet within the twenty first century.
Jen Bervin: Supply continues at Catharine Clark Gallery (248 Utah Avenue, San Francisco, California) via June 10. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
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