Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2005SYR14
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Poem Inspiration Location
Small Trees Growing Fast
poster information
Description
Small trees growing fast
Line this city's passageways
Blooms and gargoyles laugh
Linda Vielie, who died in December, lived amid the architecture and atmosphere that inspired her haiku. A Syracuse native, she had lived on the city's south and west sides, and was living downtown, in YMCA's senior apartments, when she learned about the Poster Project. It was the summer of 2003.
Another participant in the Poster Project, Martin Walls, was teaching a haiku class at the YMCA's Downtown Writers' Center. Vielie had studied painting, enjoyed literature and poetry, and was interested in the arts of Asia. She was a natural for Wall's class.
That year Vielie's daughter, Vanderie, came home from a master's degree program to spend the summer with her mother for the first time in years. “Basically what inspired her was the little area right around where we were living,” Vanderie recalls. “We really enjoyed it. That was such a special summer we had, being downtown.”
I picked out this particular haiku because of the gargoyles. Much of my work is influenced by my interests in mythology and fantastical elements, so the subject was right up my alley.
I found out that my friend, Johnny Acurso, also had a haiku featuring gargoyles, so we took our cameras and went gargoyle hunting downtown.
I found my gargoyles on the White Memorial Building, at Salina and Washington streets. I used these gargoyles and the stone carvings surrounding them as reference for creating the mischievous gargoyles in the poster.