“This is Life”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Gabby Bates: There are so many surreal images in the poem, I had no idea which one the artist would be most inspired by… [Kevin’s] work doesn’t simply represent the poem; it revolutionizes it. Designer Sarah Van Sanden: I wanted to give a sense of the text and the image interacting, playing up what I perceive as an interesting dissonance, even tension between the two. Artist Kevin Morrow: I just wanted to represent the face of the person whom this ‘speech’ was directed to. Bound by worry and not focusing on other things; more pleasing things.
Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Poet Gabby Bates currently studies creative writing at Auburn University, where she is an undergraduate research fellow and managing editor for The Circle literary magazine. Artist Kevin Morrow is a native of Wisconsin who received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2003. Designer Sarah Van Sanden lives in Seattle, where she takes every opportunity to relish in urban nature. She has studied visual art, botany and design and makes her living designing and building landscapes.
