Pink Sunglasses

monotype/mixedmedia 26 by 23 inches
Pink Sunglasses was one of my two visual responses for our upcoming exhibition Ekphrastic Art II opening this Friday at artstream. It was inspired by the poem New Sunglasses by Jennifer White. I have made two panels for this piece and I am thinking about making prints of them both because I like them so much. It is a monoprint with mixed media additions. Here is the poem:

New Sunglasses
by Jennifer White

When you’re tired of your own reflection,
Bland and flat as a dollar bill,
Put on your pink-tinted wayfarer glasses
And saunter outside—it’s spring!
Remember junior high, those bright white
Candy cigarettes? Think of pressing the V
Of your fingers against your lips, of breathing in
And blowing out powdered sugar.
Think hip: Janis Joplin. Think class: Jackie O.
Think pink: painted toenails, raspberry sherbet,
a wet collage of fallen crab apple blossoms
on the black sidewalk. You don’t have to imagine
seeing the world through rose-colored lenses: you are.
Everyone is beautiful! Pink glasses:
the antidote for fluorescent bathroom lights.
Pink glasses: the sky is rosy-fingered dawn
all day long! 10th century China: the first
glasses were magnifying glass in frames;
Ben Franklin had the idea for, then wore
the world’s first bifocals in 1760. Oh,
to see near and far in Paris! But you don’t need
glasses to correct a blur. Your perspective
could use some adjustment. The saleslady
showed you other colors—you could only think
blue mood and green with envy. It’s pink
that will train you from the outside in
so that some gray rainy day you’ll look up
at cotton candy clouds and down at tropical punch
puddles and realize you don’t even have them on.

Body & Soul: A Guide to Women’s Care, Fall 2000
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