The 9 Muses was an interdisciplinary exhibit of poetry and visual art involving 9 poets and 9 artists. In the Greek pantheon, the muses were goddesses of the arts and sciences, the source all of inspiration. Even after the fall of Hellenistic civilization, the muses continued to provide inspiration across the arts and across the centuries. Their immortality enjoys surprising currency in modern English through such terms as museum, music and amusing.

The 9 Muses brought a contemporary interpretation to the age-old theme of the muses. The poets began the project, each writing nine poems, one per muse. Each artist then received nine poems — one from each poet and one dedicated to each muse — with the assignment to create a visual response to each of the poems. The interpretations ran the gamut, from traditional to non-objective.

The final exhibit, curated by Shawn Stradley, Steven Stradley, and myself, consisted of the 81 poems and 81 corresponding artworks, and showed at the Bountiful/Davis Art Center in Bountiful, Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, the Rose Wagner Theater in Salt Lake City, and the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City in 2009. For display purposes, each piece of art was 18 inches square, and each poem was mounted on a 9” x 18” panel. The panels were arranged in 9 grids, one per muse.

The show was published by Black Rock Books in its entirety in a full-color exhibition catalogue. I did the cover design, and layout of the catalogue.

My Work

From a geometric standpoint, while these pieces were all square, I wanted to primarily use circles for the basis of the work. I designed my nine pieces as part of a unified grid, so that the circular forms would flow from one to the other, even though they wouldn’t be displayed this way.

Installation