Wendy Drexler, whom I interviewed for this site a few years ago, and whom I know from the Boston poetry scene, has been working with a visual artist named Connie Saems to create exhibits featuring collaborations between poets and visual artists. The first one I participated in appeared at Gallery Twist in Lexington, Mass in 2024. The exhibit was called “Lyrical,” and a description still appears on the gallery’s website. I collaborated with a ceramicist named Delanie Wise (here’s a link to her website).
This past year, Wendy and Connie found a home for a second, similar show at Five Sparks Gallery in Harvard, Mass. The show, titled Dialogues in Dual Languages, ran the summer of 2026. This time, they paired with Sheryl Jaffe, a paper artist and sculptor based on Cape Cod. Sheryl and I really hit it off; we bonded over an interest in the paper arts, and I got to visit her studio in Wellfleet where she has, among other things, a Hollander beater. A Hollander beater allows you to make the slurry necessary for hand-pulled paper using almost any kind of organic material, and one of the things Sheryl and I have in common is an interest in ecology. She collects plant materials from her home and local environment to create a lot of her paper and sculptures. I got to see paper she’d made out of vegetable clippings left over from her cooking, as well as sculptures she made out of other local plant materials. Here’s an album of photos I took from two separate visits.
As part of both exhibits, I worked with poet and designer Michael McInnis to create broadsheets of the collaborations. You can view and even print these broadsheets using the links below:
Frances Donovan and Delanie Wise: Ginger Jar
Frances Donovan and Sheryl Jaffe: Mermaid, No Mermaid, and Rapunzel Missing the Tower
