Words and Images For A Better World: Aralee Strange (1943-2013), Literary Artist, and her Visual Artist Friends
Aralee Strange, a poet and playwright, was born December 5, 1943, in Birmingham, Alabama. After living and working in Atlanta, GA, Cambridge, MA, and New York City, NY, she settled for more than twenty years in Cincinnati, OH. In March 2007, she moved to Athens, GA, and lived there until her passing June 2013, close to her 70th birthday.
Strange’s body of work includes Etta Stone: A Film for Radio (1990), which she wrote, produced and edited at WGUC, Cincinnati – it aired nationally on NPR stations and was included in WGBH’s Arts&Ideas series; dr. pain on main (1991), a play based on her series of poems by the same name, commissioned and produced by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; The Chronicles of Plague (1992), a play commissioned and produced by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati; An Evening at the Sad Cafe(1995), directed scenes from her screenplay This Train, performed at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati and at the Carnegie Arts Center, Covington, KY; This Train (1996-2001), a feature film she wrote, directed and edited.
Throughout her life Strange also pioneered several open poetry readings and read regularly at regional venues. Among the many awards and fellowships she received were The MacDowell Colony, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the City of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund, and the Ohio Arts Council.
The last reading series Strange founded was Athens Word of Mouth, in Athens, GA; it continues to this day. A year ago, Cincinnati poets Mark Flanigan and Jim Palmarini duplicated the series in Cincinnati, OH, (Cincinnati Word of Mouth), in her honor.
When I asked visual artist, musician and music composer, Jay Bolotin, a very close friend of Strange, whether he would consider being the visual artist featured side by side with her, as a poet, in this monthly column “Art for a Better World” of Aeqai, his first reaction was, “Can we make an exception for Aralee?” to which he very quickly added “Well, with Aralee, one artist is just not enough.” Rather than featuring only his own work, Bolotin offered instead to gather and present visual art works by artists who were close to Strange, who connected with her, who were able to capture her and her spirit.
In fact, Strange was able, and quite effortlessly, to inspire extraordinary work in others, and there were more than a few paintings done by some great painters with her visage gazing out. Also sometimes she would need an image for a broadside, for a poster of a play or a poetry reading, and wonderful artists would appear, moved by her or by her work.
In tracking down some of the following images for this column, Bolotin got in touch with the exceptional painter/field recordist, Art Rosenbaum, who used Strange’s image in his large painting “Strainer.” Rosenbaum’s note back to him sums up very well her role and influence: “I saw Aralee as a kind of visionary [standing] at the edge of the strainer [the frame].”
Bolotin plans to involve, in the near future, some of the featured artists and other talented ones who knew Strange, in a portfolio of broadsides of her series of poems, Peach Mountain Psalms.
Poet and Writer Mark Flanigan, also a dear friend of Strange, was instrumental in selecting and providing introductory notes to her poems that follow.
Strange’s poem, “prayer (a poem in a painting),” speaks to the special friendship, artistic and otherwise, that existed between her and Jay Bolotin. It refers also to the reciprocal relationship that she always found between the written word and visual art.
