Courtesy of Jane Birdsall-Lander
Context, virus, race, home truth, mask, and wishbone are the six words that local artist Jane Birdsall-Lander used in her latest edition of the Dictionary Poem Project.
In this project, Birdsall-Lander explores the relationship between language and objects or images by first selecting a word, then writing a poem and illustrating it with an image that “springs from the language itself.” In the earlier editions, she explored human relationships and connection using words such as birthday, new year, map, and storm.
Birdsall-Lander describes the selection of words as a partnership between herself and the word. “I’m always collecting words. I start by looking at the etymology, and some words just don’t go anywhere,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s me, or if some words hide and later I’ll come back to it and it’ll open. It probably has to do with me, but I partner with the word because that’s what it feels like to me.”
Some words just don’t work, like the word change. “I just can’t find the gateway to take it somewhere. I’ve tried. It’s such a powerful word, and I’ve still got it on my list,” Birdsall-Lander says. Other words she’ll hear while in conversation or read in a book, and she has to stop and write them down immediately.
The latest edition of the project, which she calls “The Pandemic Edition” because it was conceived during quarantine, “takes the viewer/reader on a deep dive into the root of racism in America, social justice, individual and global loss, the false illusion born of wishful thinking, the case for reciprocal human empathy, and the challenge of choice in the face of climate change.” That continuous climate threat, the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer, and the coronavirus weighed heavily on Birdsall-Lander’s mind and motivated her word searches. She selected words that she hopes will help others process their experiences from the past year and a half.
The reasoning behind selecting some of the words seems obvious, but for others, it’s not so apparent. Birdsall-Lander selected wishbone, for instance, because there’s so much wishful thinking in the world right now, but the differences between these wishes can actually cause even more division. “Everyone is wishing in their own way for the best,” she says. “It’s tearing us apart, but we’re all connected.”
The six prints featuring the poems will be part of the fine arts collection at the Missouri History Museum, where they will be featured in a display of work made during the pandemic. The pieces are currently in the review stage and will next move on to the museum’s acquisition committee.
