Woven images after anne ryan

Woven Images is based on the work of Anne Ryan (1889-1954), a poet and artist belonging to the early New York School of abstract expressionists. Having spent most of her life writing and dabbling in various other artistic practices, Ryan discovered her most impactful creative outlet at the age of 57. Upon viewing the collages of Kurt Schwitters in 1948, she was greatly inspired and soon devoted her artistic focus to the new medium, producing over 400 pieces during the last six years of her life. According to art journalist Deborah Solomon, in Schwitters’s work Ryan “recognized the visual equivalent of her sonnets—discrete images packed together in an extremely compressed space.”

Ryan’s miniature collages are of an intimate and delicate nature, consisting of various hand-made and found materials. The music of Woven Images was in part intended to reflect her artistic style. The text draws from various excerpts of her poetry, forming a different sort of “text collage” for each piece. The audio consists of digitally manipulated samples from vinyl records and field recordings. These recordings were largely made in Philadelphia and other parts of the northeast, including Ryan’s hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Performed by Alize Rozsnyai (soprano), Bailey Spiteri (flute and piccolo), Eric Just (B-flat and bass clarinet), Michael Shingo Crawford (violin), Leigh Brown (cello), Risa Okina (piano), and Andrew Henry (percussion and electronics).