Guernica, Birmingham Sunday and Suicide Bombers
This is a series of illuminations done in egg tempera with gold, silver and copper leaf on handmade paper inspired by events that I grew up seeing on television or studying about and recent current events that have haunted my consciousness . Thanks to Picasso whose painting "Guernica" I was able to see at MOMA as a young art student while it was on loan during its long exile, like its painter, from its home in Spain.
"Guernica 1" 11" x 14" 2002 "Guernica 2" 11" x 14" 2002
Guernica
by Norman Rosten
In Guernica the dead children
Were laid out in order upon the sidewalk,
In their white starched dresses,
In their pitiful white dresses.
On their foreheads and breasts
Are the little holes where death came in
As thunder, while they were playing
Their important summer games.
Do not weep for them, madre.
They are gone forever, the little ones,
Straight to heaven to the saints,
and God will fill the bullet-holes with candy.
Monday April 26, 1937 4:30 PM
"Birmingham Sunday" 11" x 14" 2002 "And the Choir Keeps Singing" 11" x 14" 2002
Birmingham Sunday (excerpts)
By Richard Farina
Come
round by my side and I'll sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
On
Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground.
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
The
men in the forest they once asked of me,
How many black berries grew in the Blue Sea.
And I asked them right with a tear in my eye.
How many dark ships in the forest?
The
Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone.
And I can't do much more than to sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
And the choirs keep singing of Freedom.
Sunday September 15, 1963 10:19AM
"Suicide Bombers " 11" x 14" 2002