When I began to plan the current show at YES Gallery, I was thinking about titles that were drawn from words in several of my poems, and for some reason the one that seemed the most right for this time was from a poem titled "Be As A Child" that I wrote in 2019 as part of creating a collage piece that had been requested for a show. The poem is about learning to live and love and create again in the way that children do before the world steps in with its hurts and disappointments and broken heartedness:
"Perhaps this, then, is the most fragile landscape
When the heart that has been broken
Learns to sing again
In spite of, and with all uncertainty
Trusting
Hoping
Breathing
New Life"
The title of the show became the first line, "Perhaps this, then, is the most fragile landscape" and in a very interesting way I've found myself faced with things in the world around me that seem to be almost challenging my resolve to find joy and peace in the space that has been created at YES Gallery. The show is truly stunning, more beautiful even than the first one was which is always the goal but one that I didn't expect to be able to necessarily achieve. Taking the steps of starting this gallery and saying yes have been all about what this poem speaks of, and though I wrote the poem in the Spring of 2019, its message is still resonating with me now. Saying yes to love and hope and dreams and joy and creativity and art and life are ongoing daily decisions that are not always easy to make when we live our lives with hearts that are open and fully given over to the possibility of beauty but of also the disappointment of being hurt and let down. In my life it has only been with the help of God that I've been able to find for myself a way to stay openhearted without automatically shutting down. It seems at times foolish and unwise to allow our heart to continue to love, to continue to hope where there is no sign that hope is worth waiting for, and to paraphrase my Grandmother's favorite song from "Man Of La Mancha," to dream what seem to be impossible dreams and try to reach seemingly unreachable stars. But just as my Grandmother loved that song, and her daughter, my Mother taught me that dreams were important and worth hoping and striving for, I find myself in the midst of the questions and uncertainties all around being led to look with eyes of faith, to trust and hope and believe that saying yes to life and love and creativity is still possible and necessary, and that within that yes new life will continue to grow.
YES Gallery
408 6th Street
Hoboken, New Jersey
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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