Paths of Memory and Painting - About the paths trio sonata

short-listed for Prix poesie-media 2009, Biennale Internationale des poetes Val de Marne, France, May, 2009

Featured in: Judy Malloy: Retrospective, the 2012 Electronic Literature Organization Conference, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, June 20-23, 2012

Other Exhibitions: Language-Driven Installation Art, Electronic Literature Organization Conference, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2010; E-Poetry 2009, Center of Contemporary Art Barcelona

Conferences, Readings, Presentations:Berkeley Center for New Media Roundtable, UC Berkeley, February 11, 2010, The Future of Writing, UC Irvine, CA, November, 2008; ; radio interview and reading, Cover to Cover, KPFA, December, 2008

Written in three part contrapuntal composition, paths of memory and painting is part 3 of a Trilogy of the same name. In Part III, the artist-narrator, Dorothy Abrona McCrae, is sitting in a cafe in Berkeley in the present time. While she waits for her husband, Sid, to return from an expedition to Berkeley bookstores, she makes quick sketches of the people who walk by the cafe and remembers the beginnings of the Bay Area Figurative style with Rehearsal, David Park's painting of the studio 13 Jazz Band and the work of World War II veteran Elmer Bischoff. The narrative also includes her recollections of the parallel development of her own work, the painting of her self portrait in her own version of the Bay Area Figurative style, her first meeting with Sid and details of their love affair.

Selecting the coda returns the work -- with a series of lines of poetry from Part III -- to Part I: recollected on this early morning.

This work displays most effectively on a screen that is 1200 pixels wide, but it should work on any screen that is larger than that. To navigate, wait for the text to advance, or click on the lexia you want to follow. The work begins with a series of lines of poetry from the narrative. Click or wait for the text to change.

California Art Writers

I have been told that Dorothy Abrona McCrae is so "alive" that some readers think she is a real person. Thus, it should be noted that this narrative and all that I have written about the fictional Bay Area Figurative painter, Dorothy Abrona McCrae, would not be possible without the scholarship and books of the men and women who write about California and California art and the publishers who have made the histories of California and California art available, particularly the University of California Press, Heyday Books, California Historical Society, The Irvine Museum, and The Saint Mary's College Museum of Art.

Among many others, thanks are due to Thomas Albright, Jacquelynn Baas, Nancy Boas, Brother Cornelius, Janet Driesbach, William H. Gerdts Ann Harlow, Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., Kimi Kodani Hill, Katherine Church Holland, Edan Hughes, Caroline A. Jones, Harvey L. Jones, Clarence King, Susan Landauer, Jay T. Last, Gordon T. McClelland, Joan Irvine Smith, Will South, Jean Stern, Karen Tsujimoto, Holly Wermiel, and Charles Wollenberg.

Judy Malloy:
Paths of Memory and Painting
You are reading Part III:
paths of memory and painting

Interface and Structure

The interface for part three is an array of three side by side lexias that advance polyphonically. The work loops until the "coda" is selected, allowing the reader to eventually read all of the words by continuing to follow the work. It is meant to be like a piece of polyphonic music -- a trio sonata perhaps -- where the reader might hear different things every time he or she listens to it, until finally the whole work is comprehensible.

I am grateful to the musicologists and musicians whose programs, recordings, and books have shown me the possibilities for expanding the word-based music structures that I began in the early 1990's with Wasting Time. They include musician and musicologist Davitt Moroney, Professor of Musicology at UC Berkeley, Catherine Bott and Lucy Skeaping, hosts (at the time of the writing of this work) The Early Music Show on BBC Radio 3, and Donald Macleod, host of Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3.

Last update, August 27, 2017.