HFR
Hayden's Ferry Review
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Three Works by Brooke Schifano

 

Tamale

“Tamale” by Brooke Schifano. Collage of a vintage photograph of a woman wrapped inside a tamale by a single hand.

Armful

“Armful” by Brook Schifano. Collage of an arm holding pieces of hands and a pea pod.

Spoon

“Spoon” by Brooke Schifano. Black and white hand holding a tablespoon of orange and pink roses.


Artist Statement:

In March of 2020, like everyone else, I decided to get serious about my hobbies. I have always cut and pasted, but I wanted to really collage. I bought a batch of magazines from an elderly man selling his collection on eBay. “My wife passed and I don’t need these anymore,” he wrote. I bid, I won. The prize? 25 issues of Sunset Magazine from 1984-1986. They came in a thick box wrapped with so many layers of tape I couldn’t see the cardboard, and I thought of the old man’s hands taping and taping and taping. I thought of grief. I wondered how I would cut into them without destroying them. I read through every issue, but what kept my eye were the hands. Hands pinching marigold stems, hands folding corn husks, hands cradling armfuls of produce. Sunset featured pages of black and white guides to everything from cooking to carpentry. These guides were full of disembodied hands in action. And so I cut out hands, and hands, and hands, and hands. I arranged them into many configurations, some of which are shown here. I think of these pieces like poems, and my favorite poems remind me of a feeling I’d forgotten to remember.

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Brooke Schifano is a writer and educator currently based in Boston, MA, where she splits her time between a tabby cat and a vining Pothos. Her recent poetry and nonfiction can be found in Peatsmoke, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. Her visual art has been featured in Response, A Journal for New Work.