The
Sand in the Corners of Her Smile
Creative Uses of Photography and
Typography
in Contemporary Haiga
An Interview
with
Gary LeBel
The haiga of Georgia poet and collage artist, Gary LeBel, is often distinguished
by the use of cut or torn pieces of photographs and type. In true collage style,
LeBel integrates these with other visual elements such as brush painting and
hand-written calligraphy, all of which add up to an entirely contemporary
interpretation of this 300 year old art form from Japan. LeBel is currently the
foremost haiga artist in the West, breaking up the photographic image as it comes
straight from the camera or as “found art” from other media. In doing so, he
shows us new ways in which photography, as well as typography, may take on the
same resonance, suggestion, and nuance we prize in traditional haiga.
Gary LeBel lives, works, writes and scissor-cuts in the greater Atlanta, Georgia
area. His haiga have appeared in Haiga Online, Modern Haiga, Modern Haiku and
Reeds Contemporary Haiga. Modern English Tanka Press published his first
collection of short poems, haibun and prose poems, Abacus, in 2008. This
interview explores the evolution of LeBel’s use
of photographic and typographic elements in haiga and how these elements
can enhance the expressiveness of this increasingly popular form in the Western
haiku community.
JE: Which came first‒your work in
collage or in haiga? What attracted you to collage?
GL: First of all, let me thank you
heartily, Jeanne, for inviting me to talk about haiga: it is an honor and a
privilege, and also a great subject. Collage came first. What attracted me then,
and to an even greater extent now, are these fundamental attributes: collage is
a visual/conceptual exploration of ideas, and is, by its very nature,
multi-layered. I build an image over time from the simplest of elements just as
one constructs a house to live in. In short, I like to make things; that is, I
like to build up a picture plane piece by piece, if only to see how far that
particular ticket, or image, will take me. Sometimes an image can be executed in
a matter of minutes, while with others the constituent parts might lay on a sheet
of white paper under a pane of glass for months at a time, until the day when it
either comes together or its constituent parts are stolen for something else. In
other words, it comes down to decision-making.
JE: Tell us your approach to collage:
how you collect and assemble your materials and how you work them into the
strong designs that characterize your work. I know you clip photographs from a
variety of sources, but you also do your own photography. You incorporate many
other media into your haiga as well.
GL: Picture a guy lollygagging along in
a parking lot in front of a Wal-Mart or a Target or anywhere for that matter: he
reaches down; he picks up something strange from the pavement, something driven
over, something worn and utterly beaten. He examines it a moment, and then tucks
it into his back pocket. It may be a piece of wood, a toy (I recently found a
toy piano I already had a poem for) or part of someone’s grocery list which, if
the handwriting is interesting enough, I’ll file away as well. Nearly always
what I pick up immediately—and this is the best way I can describe it— begins to
‘sing’, or at least to chatter a little. In that speech, it whispers another
idea of itself. Like an actor or a chameleon or other kind of changeling, it’s
ready to take on a new role, but determining that new role takes time. Where I
used to clip up magazines when I began thirty years ago, I found a greater
bounty in taking my own pictures when digital cameras arrived on the scene. I
photograph everything: people have
noticed me snapping pictures of a range of items from concrete slabs to peeling
paint on a gutter, and they quietly scamper around me and hope I won’t speak to
them. My approach is simple and has no rules per se: I play and discover. I like
naturally weathered things like roots and wood scraps, but also what many would
call refuse: cast-off things like rusty tin or brightly colored plastic which
can start up a new ‘idea machine’ or become a frame, a cage to hold an image
captive in a picture plane. Only rarely do I take a photograph of something like
a landscape the meaning of which generally begins and ends aesthetically with itself.
As for media, many of my images are fully three-dimensional and so for that
reason, collage, like an excited electron, can easily jump into assemblage.
JE: Most Western collage is dense with
information packed wall-to wall within the visual field. Your collages have the
visual simplicity of design we see in traditional haiga. How did your study of
the haiga of Japanese masters inform your work? I know you have studied Japanese
and Chinese calligraphy and have incorporated this calligraphy into your own
work, as in the haiga shown below.
Hōrai ya tada sammon no miyo no matsu
All mine, the
fields
of Paradise
for a sprig of pine
Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)
GL: There is no simplicity so natural,
graceful or as elegant to me as one finds in Japanese art-forms. Take for
example Japanese novels such as those by Sozeki, Kawabata or Mishima. They’re
usually shorter than most western novels, but I find the worlds they evoke with
economy no less rich than in the longer British, American or European novels.
This of course is a terrible generalization, but for me it often holds water. The
density of much western collage can sometimes leave one puzzled instead of
invited in, though this always depends on the skill of the collagist. Kurt
Schwitters’ collages are busy but brilliant, electric and exquisitely balanced;
Robert Motherwell’s collages (and paintings) are simple, open and loaded with
duende: his work has the tune of daily
life (and its mysteries) humming in them like a tuning fork, as well as a great
sense of joy and play, and often pathos, very much like Matisse. Motherwell’s
artwork has run parallel to my personal sense of aesthetics since the beginning.
Yes, I have studied Japanese calligraphy and a little of the language because I
always prefer to hear a poem in its own tongue in tandem with any translation,
which is a very muddy area in itself if you like to compare one against another
as I do. I always try to acquire Machado or Montale or Japanese haiku in
bi-lingual editions, however crude my pronunciation might be, the buck-toothed
speaking Latin.
JE: Collage appears to be an ideal
complement to haiku in that, like haiku, it is built on the juxtaposition of
images. What does collage permit you to do that traditional ink-brushed paintings
do not?
GL: Collage certainly does not supersede the brush in any way, but merely activates with a kind of space within a space, much like the layers in a sheet of mica give the surface of a stone its sense of depth. They are two different shores of the same river: one may have a sweeping meadow on one side and on the other bank there may be a thronging city.
JE:
Although your haiga sometimes are almost entirely comprised of a photographs,
you most often feature a partial image from a photograph. What is your purpose
in using partial photographic images?
JE: I find your haiga below
particularly powerful, in part because it shows only half of the Indian’s face.
It not only makes me want to complete the image in my imagination, it also
resonates strongly with Buson’s verse. Please comment on what you were thinking
when you made this haiga.
Yuku ware ni todo naru nare ni aki futatsu
Here where we
part
two autumns
begin
Yosa Buson (1716-1784)
GL: It’s best to discuss this haiga by
way of background. I had taken my daughter and her friend to an amusement park.
While they were running about here and there, I saw a round object, a creeper
root on the ground, the oblong shape in the picture. I thought it rather
beautiful and elegant and kept it; I especially liked the little curlicue at the
top. I had been rereading Dee Brown’s Bury
My Heart at Wounded Knee at the time, and so it was fresh in my memory. In
the picture gallery inside the book, I was mesmerized (and haunted) by a
photograph of Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses: he looked proud, intelligent,
serene and utterly tragic. When I read Brown’s account of the terrible decision
many Native Americans such as the Sioux had to make, to either retreat to their
ancestral hills with soldiers at their heels, thus leaving their families, or to
endure the violence, squalor, imprisonment and humiliation of reservation life,
I saw a life cut into two. Buson’s poem, one of my favorites, came instantly to
mind. I had a sprig of autumn leaves pressed and drying under a sheet of iron
and added it to the image. The wooden fragment, on which the image of Young-Man
is attached, I picked up off the road that ran by our house at the time. Then I
lined up all the autumn colors I had on my work table, and began to paint.
Lastly, I added the poem in brown ink, in Romaji.
JE: You often use cuttings from “found”
photographs, such as from magazines or even container wrappings showing
photographed images. In doing so, you deconstruct the context of the original
source material and reconstruct it in an entirely new way in your collages,
often integrating it with other images and media, as in the haiga beow. How
important to you is this reconstructing prossess and how does it contribute to
your haiga in a way that an entire photograph or even a painting does not?
GL: The deconstructing and
reconstructing of disparate materials is what some might call ‘process,’ a
rather dry and clinical word for what happens between the mind, the eye and the
fingertips. I like to call it by a vigorous German word I think is fitting, as
the ‘während,’ or the ‘during’ in
artistic creation. Thus the best part in any artwork for me is not the footprint
it leaves, but finding out where it’ll lead on a personal journey. For me, an
unaltered photograph encapsulates a world entirely in and of itself, as I’d said
before, and thus crowds out all the viewing space, whereas parts of things can
make a new whole and evoke, I hope, a sense of journey and adventure. A painted
haiga depends much on the placement and style of the text’s delivery. Painted
haigas can work exceedingly well if care and balance is worked out effectively
and thoughtfully.
JE:
Occasionally, you have even overlaid your haiga with wooden strips and other
three-dimensional objects, as in the haiga below. When and how did this element
enter your work?
homeless
the pebbled imprint
on her cheek
GL: Wood strips, as in the haiga,
‘homeless’, were used to construct the piece on several levels, some dynamically
and some as ideation. For example, I shaped a roof peak to remind the viewer of
the house in which the figure was born or had lost, to convey a sense of house.
Dynamically, the wood pieces fragment the rather all-over image below, a montage
of autumn leaves littering the floor of a lake and sorrowful eyes. Structurally,
the wooden boundaries gave me different zones with which to experiment with
text. If you were to take the wood away, I fear the piece would suffer. This in
the end may be the best and only litmus test: aesthetics. When did I start
adding wood to collages? I look at work I did thirty-some years ago and see that
even then I loved using wood, a once-living thing that shelters us, keeps our
secrets, makes our paper and lets us relish the cold winter rain from a
comfortable remove!
JE: Your haiga often are very playful.
Part of that appears to come from your use of typography and calligraphy to
deliver the haiku, as opposed to word-processed and digitally imposed verses. I
get the feeling that “anything goes!” with how you might present the haiku in
your collages. You appear to be fond of using an old typewriter and even
stencils, as we might guess from the haiga below and in many of the haiga shown
in this interview. Which do you find yourself using most often‒typography or
calligraphy‒and why?
GL: I have never, insofar as I recall,
for publication, used purely word-processed typography. It’s exceedingly dull. I
believe inherently that it robs a word (and hence the poem) of its blood and
spirit. And yes, ‘anything goes!’ In the haiga, ‘sunlight finds a chink’ I used
a children’s stamp set which I dipped in paint, though I have a variety of
others I don’t mistreat that way. At times, I’ll press harder and let the stamp
‘roll over’ some, leaving an ink trace of its edge; I do this consciously
because I want there always to be a reminder of sweet imperfection in a handmade
object: this gives the haiga a human presence, spirit and I hope, its charm. If
you were to walk along a road and find an Ansel Adams postcard alongside the
Polaroid of someone you’d never met with a captivating and mysterious face, with
which photograph would your mind start writing a story without your conscious
consent? (Thus we’ve come full circle to the magic of fragments and partial
images again!) I use both stamp typography and calligraphy about the same I
believe. Why which is favored above another has to do with the subject, image
and presentation of the ideas in the poem, or the looseness/tightness
(informality/formality) of a particular image or poem.
JE: Your haiga above and the one below
persent the verse in two different graphic styles. Below, this play of styles
acts to send the reader’s eye in and out of the main image. Do you think this
enhances the resonance between the verse and the visaul image? If so, how does it
work?
GL: In any visual statement, even
though haiga employs a literary counterpart, the picture, the image, is that
which grabs the eyes initially. And this image must keep the viewer’s eyes alive
and constantly working to hook his or her heart and mind. In ‘to their
universe,’ the main idea, of course, is
rain. I had worked up dozens of ‘rains’ calligraphically, all of them
unsuitable, and so I put the piece aside for a long time. I
was finally able to write the word as I envisioned it much later at a time when
I was in a more playful and relaxed frame of mind. I stamped the remaining words
in the margins to soften the rather harsh lines of the ‘door’ that appears in
the image. This also lends itself to the idea of inside/outside.
JE: As noted above, you have even gone
so far as to present the haiku in kana
or hiragana, as in your tribute to the
haiku of Japanese masters in your collection,
scissorcuts, below. For those who do not read Japanese, the
calligraphy becomes an entirely decorative element and the reader must look
below (that is, outside) the haiga itself for the translation. Is this a
hindrance to appreciating the resonance between the verse and the visual
elements in the haiga? Or do you feel we have become accustomed to reading
translations, captions, headlines and so on that precede or follow an image? I
would imagine that it opens up the possibilities for many creative uses of
foreign language texts and typography.
Hebi nigete ware wo mishi me no kusa ni nokoru
The snake disappeared
but its eyes are still staring
up from the grass
Kyoshi Takahama (1874‒1959
GL: Regarding the Kyoshi poem, the
writing of hiragana is not natural for
me but I do the best I can, haiga by haiga, when I think the piece would
benefit. A vertical approach to the writing would have ruined the horizontality
I was seeking. Letting the hiragana
alternate between light and dark kanji and kana alleviates the monotony in the
lettering and the rather dark images, all of which came from a luxurious Ford
truck brochure I picked up while having mine serviced. I don’t believe that any
serious reader/viewer is bothered in any way by having to look down for a
translation of a text or script employed before returning to experience the
piece armed with that information. To me a good haiga constructs a sequestered,
unrepeatable mental realm within its modest graphic boundaries. If you have to
leave it for a footnote, you can still return without losing its flavor. Yes,
other languages open unlimited and diverging directions and possibilities. I
have been teaching myself to read Greek, mainly to use its gorgeous alphabet
pictorially, and also out of a secret wish it were ours instead of the more
pedestrian Roman one we adopted. One thing is sure: once you have absorbed the
poem and return to the image, the text must then blend in as part of the image
and not seclude itself by announcing in no uncertain terms that it IS a text. If
done correctly, the foreign tongue will release its flavor like a lozenge. This
is critical, and I’ve been working hard to make my text-forms part of the image
rather than separate or simply added on.
JE:
You often break up your verses, as in your haiga below from scissorcuts, so that your typography or calligraphy is creatively
placed in or around the visual images. Are there any “do’s” or “don’t’s” you
tell yourself when you choose where to place your lines?
GL: In the haiga, ‘finally there’, I wanted the reader, too, to make a run for
the sea. The image on which the middle verse “he runs down the footpath” is
written, was an earlier collage about the same subject. So I appropriated it and
worked or ‘wormed’ the words around and through it. I saw, as every father does,
a little of Michelangelo's David in my young
‘screw-haired’ son, when he flung his tee shirt over his shoulder, stripped down
to his suit and ran for the breakers.
JE: In another haiga, shown below, the
typography is rendered vertically. Is this an homage to Japanese calligraphy or is
it meant to suggest the movement of the old lady shuffling to answer the door,
or perhaps both? This brings up the point that the rendered verse is really an
image itself and may even be the chief image. Please comment.
JE: Today, the digital manipulation of
images in collage is popular in the West. To what extent do you process your
images digitally? As a point of discussion, please comment on your haiga below.
GL: The software I use isn’t very sophisticated. I like it that way; it forces me to solve problems by my own hand and reckoning. I find that if you use software excessively, the line between slick, as in commercial posing, and artistic intent (ideation) grows rather thin, and you lose the all-important sense of the handmade object which is the very fulcrum of the haiga; the work becomes akin to the difference one feels between looking at a mass-produced rug and then at a Navajo original. I believe that too much ‘slickness’ divorces haiga practitioners from their art, and their footprints disappear. After all, it is our footprints that individuate us and make our images alive with us, that is, with our particular experience, what’s inside us, and why we wrestle with our psyches and spend time and effort to realize an idea about the world.