Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2021SYR01
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
Wild Autumn Wind Whips
poster information
Description
Wild autumn wind whips
Two young lovers first wild kiss
Embrace crimson leaves
Walking along Onondaga Lake the summer of 2020 I met a woman who told me about the Poster Project. That afternoon I wrote this haiku about an unforgettable kiss by that lake decades earlier – a snapshot of an innocent young couple in college starting life together.
This college romance led to a marriage proposal at our graduation dinner dance. He fell on his knees at the top of a formal, winding staircase, and a friend he grew up with took a photo I have to this day.
Our plans together were cut short, however, because thirty-three days later he died instantly in a car crash on the way to meet me. And yet, even once, even briefly, that glimpse of eternity sustains me. And although pain lasts a lifetime, so does joy.
There was a door to which I found no key
There was a veil past which I could not see
Some little talk awhile of me and thee
There seemed—and then no more of thee and me.
― Omar Khayyám
I am a transplant from Toledo, Ohio… my birthplace. But the CNY region has been my home for over 30 years. Over these decades, I have literally walked hundreds of miles throughout the Town of Clay, Liverpool and Syracuse. My numerous experiences in this adopted land have inspired me visually. I use a catalog of internalized memories and images to help create my illustrations. During these past 15 years, I have observed multitudes of people around me. I have seen the highs and lows (and everything in between) of their public lives.
In Syracuse I have traveled many times along the Onondaga Creek Walk and the area surrounding it. When I read this efficient haiku that evoked the beauty of the fall season and the passion of two people in love, the idea of my eventual illustration bloomed inside my head. Once I took a photograph at dusk in the Franklin Square area, the poster design came together quickly. I wanted to use the shape of an imagined couple to frame the scene via the use of negative space. Once the first draft was completed, it all felt like it was meant to be. Simultaneously as the sun begins to set, the dawn of young love begins.