Two Poems + Video
by Amy Childress
A Silent Movement
I thought I was alone
Artist's Statement:
Both the written text and videos of “A Silent Movement” and “I Thought I was Alone” were originally created for a larger body of work titled, Inhabited: finding refuge in an unknown landscape. Through this body of work I wanted to explore how the same text could be experienced differently. I created two written poems and two video poems. The written poems are intentionally laid out on the page to create more of a visual experience for the reader with just text. The video poems are a compilation of short videos I took in natural areas around Iowa City and audio that is a combination of spoken word and improvisations from Bay Area cellist, Stevie Rose. The reader, now viewer and listener, experiences the text through the absence of it visually.
Amy Childress is a book artist, writer, and librarian residing next to the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, UT. She completed her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2021 and her MLS from the University of Iowa in 2020. She has studied European, Eastern and Indo-Islamic Papermaking techniques with Timothy Barrett and Nicholas Cladis. She has taught book arts workshops at various libraries in Iowa and Utah, as well as for the Morgan Paper Conservatory. In 2020, she was awarded a Caxton Club grant for her thesis book, Inhabited. Her artist books and broadsides are held in academic and private collections in the United States and abroad. Her work explores the parallel between the subtle moments that happen in nature and in interpersonal relationships.