recent work

Arlene Kim Suda
San Francisco, CA
Summer/fall 2016

View drawings from this series (pdf)

In this work, I wanted to create a collection of artwork about time - really timelessness. This idea started as a tribute to the sea, Poems to the Sea, back in 2014. Poetry is what drew me to notice the sea with a greater presence and sensitivity. It started with reading poetry by Virgil, Pablo Neruda, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot and admiring art by Cy Twombly, J.M.W. Turner, Ellsworth Kelly and Helen Frakenthaler.

What emerged is an awareness of how many writers, painters, musicians of our past saw something in the sea that inspired them, brought solace from sorrow or a recognition of the miracle of life. And today, we go to these same places, feel the same feelings that recharge and reconnect us in ways that inspire our own poetry and lives. It made me see the sea as a mystical place where all time becomes one when we can feel the place from our hearts rather than from our logical minds.

My hope for this body of work is that it will blur the lines of how we think about and experience time -- and build an awareness that 2000+ years of connectedness can exist together in one place right here and right now.

POEMS TO THE SEA AND TIME 2016

"Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dream-crossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window toward the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings..."

from Ash Wednesday VI
T.S. Eliot, April 1930

"Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire..."

from Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day
W.H. Auden, July 1940

"…the wind does not weep
for my sorrow, or yours...
It seems to weep for all of us
Without caring about any of us."

"...I feel it everywhere
an indifference and a love
touching all of us and our only earth
with a chance for renewal."

"...I look to the north, the south, the east and the west
Searching for clues to find my bearings
But all I notice are the tears of the wind
A constant reminder of the beauty
And agony of this love."

from Tears of the Wind
A.K. SUDA September 2016

"And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks..."

from Ash Wednesday VI
T.S. Eliot, April 1930

poems to the sea
JULY 8 - 27, 2016

View drawings from this series (pdf)

Sea and waves.
Boundless time --
invisible heartbeat and
breath of our Earth.
Will you slow your
sky and time-scapes
until they heal all wounds
and erase the doubt that
we aren’t full of love?

POEMS TO THE SEA
(2014-5)

emotion, compassion,
healing, transformation
the place where I'm starting
the place where things will end
here come the waves
down by the sea...
wind, water, earth, light