“Separation”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What made you think of Broadsided for this story?
Writer Nicole Baute: I discovered Broadsided while searching for publications open to very short prose submissions. I loved the idea of collaborating with an artist to create something that could be posted up in my community.
What inspires you in this story? What drew you to it?
Artist Løchlann Jain: Even as I reread it now to answer the question I’m not quite sure. I just really love the momentum of the work.
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your story?
Writer Nicole Baute: I thought the art would play on the science.
When you began this piece, was it color, shape, or some other aspect that you followed? Did that change?
Artist Løchlann Jain: I read the poem a few times, and then launched a drawing – this is what resulted…
Did the visual artist refract any element of the story that made you see it differently?
Writer Nicole Baute: The symmetry of both the story and its structure became more apparent to me. I felt the twins reflecting off each other, identical but not the same.
What surprised or struck you once you saw the finished broadside?
Writer Nicole Baute: The themes of fertility and conception as a wild natural occurrence came through in a powerful way that I was not necessarily conscious of while writing.
Have you ever written work that has been inspired by visual art? What was that experience like for you? Why were you inspired to do so?
Writer Nicole Baute: Yes! I’m often inspired by visual art and the lives of artists. Earlier this year I spent a few hours wandering the Picasso museum in Barcelona and scribbling madly in my notebook about the Blue Period and the Rose Period and everything in between. I ended up writing a short creative non-fiction piece about aging and the passage of time.
How does literature fit into your creative life as a visual artist?
Artist Løchlann Jain: I don’t make a huge distinction between drawing and writing in my creative practices. For me they are two legible ways (ie. practices with histories) to make sense of the world.
Describe the collaboration in one word.
Writer Nicole Baute: Alchemy
Artist Løchlann Jain: Satisfying
If this broadside were a piece of music, what would it be?
Writer Nicole Baute: Instrumental, mostly violins.
Artist Løchlann Jain: Monteverde’s “Vespers.”
Read any good books lately?
Writer Nicole Baute: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, and I am re-reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Seen any good art lately?
Writer Nicole Baute: I just got back from Japan, where I happened upon the Leonard Foujita exhibit at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. He was a Japanese-French painter who painted alongside the likes of Picasso and Modigliani in Paris during the 1920s. It was fascinating to see what he had in common with the European impressionists of the time but also where his work departed into the fantastic and the strange.
Artist Løchlann Jain: John Akomfrah’s “Vertigo Sea.”
Anything else? (Here, we invite the collaborators to invent a question, add a comment, or otherwise speak to what the questions so far have not tapped about their Broadsided experience).
Writer Nicole Baute: Thank you so much for this opportunity!