Cleavemark Drive is a collaborative, multimedia installation between poet/artist Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and visual artist Cheryl Wassenaar.
Working with Schlaifer’s book Cleavemark (BOAAT Press, August, 2016), which laments a familial loss, Wassenaar and Schlaifer collaborated to visually reinterpret the text an in immersive installation at fort gondo in St. Louis, Missouri. Fragments of the words from these poems provided a narrative context and atmosphere that dominated the space. The aesthetic choices picked by Wassenaar evoke the plangent, urgent voice of Schlaifer’s writing.
The exhibition builds on Wassenaar’s decade-long investigation of text and language as a system of meaning that is dependent upon arrangement and context.
The sculptural elements of the installation, created by Schlaifer, combine raw household materials such as sugar, salt, soap and sundry vintage objects. Through these is an exploration of processes accretion and excretion as an analogue the persistent, boundless experience of loss.
While the specific combination of elements draw on specific sensory memories of the poet, the viewer is meant to draw upon the collective sense of loss and grief.
Everything you want to know about dishes
happens in a nest stackable as
aloe with a little teeth
it is the first wall hinging
all the house in happiness and death
the house is not so wide
the busy wall is the busy wall
and they are kept here
a throat’s extent
in railing
the house is thin
as pivots:
living
living rounds the stair
the house is not so wide:
there is a door and a door
Cleavemark Drive
you know better the acorns, yes —the particularly
silvery asphalt the pin, you say your house might smell the same
cutting vegetables for chicken I ask you mid-rib
through breast meat:is it strange to have a craving for liver : and what’s a giblet
how do you tell the difference between the liver and the heart: so, okay,
like liverwurst, what is that —you summon so exactly
pounds of him to spread on hearty rounds of rye
and standing here over a bowl full of necks I want to say:
he just handed me a cracker :but how can I
get its legs off without messing up the skin —growing up in this house again
is like eggshells over eggshells— you need a pair of scissors that can cut through bone
of the dogs with cordsthey spread a netday and night yourheart goes round it
barkingmoves because of piecingbecause you hearthe dogs alert—
closer—nearer nowthe chasingbefore your potscan feel
—alerteach closer—nearer—nearer dogsnearer
backa foot-pace—evening they come backand feel the doorsthe lord
that brought me here can count my bonesaround itround iton its
wallsAwake &it is not enoughthat suddenly
it weighs the heartthat skillful on your lipsI come to ends and walls
I am an objectI have seen a limitI turn my feetI hurry
—not sleeping
the edge of the bed
the bed frameworries itself
in dishes
find:a slipknot
slung by stairs
a stairwellspun on
as in: needle
a hood-vent
marmalade
ceramic
covers sugar
covers cream
Towels over bowls of rising active yeast
The lord will give
The lord records
Finally
she set the kitchen door ajar
I startled her
right out of her bible—
difficult to see God
with only one good eye
read in
Stovelight
Heavens—
Percolate:
the side-by-side
makes ice
Whoever finds its honey
finds a digest:a garden of
arthritis
Heavens—
on her
quilted heart
Wet heat
for the copying
and in copying
the type
her middle finger’s
middlepinks and whites
Surely God has worn me out
the pencil swells her palm
My hands and feet have shriveled
and I can count my bones
It’s dark in here,
Nanny—
I heard your spoon.
All my springs are in you
