For Emily

May 23 - September 13, 2009

Join MacKenzie Head Curator, Timothy Long, for a tour of For Emily on Friday, July 24, 2009 at
7:00 p.m.

Over the course of the August long weekend, Regina will be a poetry hotspot as the annual meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society takes place at the Hotel Saskatchewan. In conjunction with this meeting, the theme of which is “Emily Dickinson: Queen Without a Crown,” the MacKenzie Art Gallery will present For Emily, an exhibition featuring works from the Gallery's permanent collection.

To see the For Emily poster, click here. To download the For Emily exhibition handout, click here.

This exhibition, a collaboration between Head Curator Timothy Long and conference organizer Dr. Cindy MacKenzie of the University of Regina, will bring together word and image through an examination of how artists and poets create meaning using separate but related techniques.

The starting point for the exhibition is the poetry of Emily Dickinson, in particular, her repeated use of the techniques of metonymy and ellipsis. Metonymy is a device which we use every time we utter a phrase like “I smoke a pack a day.” Here, the container “pack” is substituted for what it contains, “cigarettes.” According to MacKenzie, metonymy in Dickinson’s work is also “a way of creating contingent meanings—achieved by constellations of images or words or even constellations of full poems.” Ellipsis, which usually appears in texts as “…”, is the technique of leaving gaps in a line of poetry in order to let the reader “fill in the blanks.” Both of these devices have their counterparts in the visual arts: a sculptor, for instance, may create an empty dress to talk about the personality of the individual who once wore it (metonymy), or a painter might make a fragmentary image of a heart which leaves the viewer to mentally reconstruct the whole (ellipsis).

Interestingly, a number of the works in the exhibition are by women artists, such as Gathie Falk, whose imagery, as much as their technique, relates to Dickinson’s texts. The connection between the artists and the poet will be further reinforced by the introduction of a sound component which will bring Dickinson’s spoken poetry into the Gallery space.

For more information on the Emily Dickinson International Society Annual Meeting taking place in Regina July 31 to August 2, 2009 click here.

Image:

Gathie Falk
Dress with Crossed Ankles, 1998
papier-maché, acrylic paint, varnish
91.4 x 55.9 x 50.8 cm
Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, purchased with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program and with funds from the James Kurtz Memorial Foundation

Co-curated by Timothy Long and Cindy MacKenzie. Organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the City of Regina Arts Commission

For Emily Programming

To see the For Emily poster, click here.

Poetry in the Garden: An Evening Inspired by Emily Dickinson with a tour of For Emily led by MacKenzie Head Curator, Timothy Long
Friday, July 24, 2009
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Emily Dickinson would have loved Saskatchewan’s warm summer nights! Join a tour of For Emily led by MacKenzie Head Curator, Timothy Long, and finish the evening with a series of Dickinson-inspired poetry performances in the MacKenzie Art Gallery Sculpture Garden, featuring Cindy MacKenzie, Anne Campbell, Judith Krause, and Barbara Dana. Bring your own lawn chair or blanket. This program is free!

Anne Campbell is an award-winning author of four collections of poetry, with a fifth due, Soul to Touch, due in the fall of 2009. She is presently a Research Fellow at the CPRC University of Regina working on a biography of Arthur McKay, one of the famed Regina Five group of artists. As well as writing with music composer Tom Schudel, Anne’s work has been performed, recorded and published internationally.

Judith Krause is an award-winning Regina writer, editor and teacher whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Her most recent publications include her fourth collection of poems, Mongrel Love (Hagios books, 2008), and a collaborative chapbook, blue transport the insistence of green (Jack Pine Press, 2007).

Barbara Dana made her New York stage debut at the age of 17 in the off-Broadway production of Arthur Laurent s’ A Clearing in the Woods. She appeared on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Enter Laughing, Room Service and William Inge’s Where’s Daddy? She was also a member of the improvisational group, Second City, appearing in Chicago and New York. Off-Broadway, Ms. Dana has appeared in a number of movies and TV programs. She is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her first non-fiction book, Wider than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson (Kent State University Press), co-edited with Dickinson scholar Cind y MacKenzie, was published last year. Her latest novel, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson is just out, published by HarperCollins.

Cindy MacKenzie is an educator who has taught in many classrooms. After receiving a B.A. and B.E.A.D. deg rees in French, and spending a semester as au pair for a family in Paris in the early 70s, she began her career teaching French at Central, Campbell, and Thom Collegiates. Eight years later during a maternity leave, she began to take classes in English at the University of Regina, eventually earning another B.A. Honours. This degree was followed by an M.A. and finally, a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her particular interest in nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson began after taking an American Literature class in the mid 80s and since that time, she has pursued her study of this fascinating woman writing both an M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation, as well as several articles, three books, and numerous papers presented at conferences in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. While carrying on her teaching at the University of Regina, she is currently working on another book that emphasizes the relationship between Dickinson’s letters and her poetics. As a board member of the Emily Dickinson International Society, she is convening the 2009 annual meeting of schola rs and readers of Dickinson in Regina.

The Belle of Amherst Performance

Saturday August 1, 2009
8:00 to 11:00 p.m.

Actor/writer Barbara Dana will perform The Belle of Amherst in the Shumiatcher Theatre at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. Reception to follow. This performance is part of the Emily Dickinson International Society's 2009 Annual Conference taking place in Regina from July 31- August 2, 2009. For more information on the conference click here. Tickets are $15 (cash only), available at Bach and Beyond!

For Emily

Twitter Updates