Artist Statement |  I make ink from foraged materials—chokeberries from a bush in my front yard, broken iris buds and acorn caps I collect on walks, scraps of rusty metal and copper wire I find on the ground or in my basement. It’s an art form that’s very much about process. First, observe. Then, collect. After that, there’s boiling or soaking and waiting. More observing. I test the inks by dripping, brushing, or smearing the distilled liquid onto paper. I like to watch them change as they dry. I like watching how two inks interact when I allow them to bleed together.

It strikes me that this process of coaxing color from items collected out in the world is a lot like making poetry—and found poetry in particular. In these hybrid pieces, I’ve paired streaks and drops of handmade ink with pages of an old book that I cut with an X-Acto knife to create brief poems. Found color meets found text. It is my hope that in this meeting, you, dear reader, will find something, too.

Kathryn Smith is the author of Self-Portrait with Cephalopod (Milkweed Editions, 2021), winner of the 2019 Jake Adam York Prize, as well as the collection Book of Exodus (Scablands Books, 2017) and the chapbook Chosen Companions of the Goblin, winner of the 2018 Open Country Press Chapbook Contest.