Drawing The Six Directions

Eileen R. Tabios began her “Poems Form/From the Six Directions” partly because she was trying to create a poem in a new way. Creating mixed-media sculptures whose processes engendered verse-poems fit that impetus. But, unexpectedly, the sculpting process made her focus for the first time on working with physical material. As a writer working with imagination and words, she was surprised by the pleasurable frisson of dealing with the tangible as found materials made their way into her mixed-media sculptures. Such materials included old coasters, used magazines, ribbons, recycled cardboard, department store shopping bags, and so on. The sculpting process created a “simmer” in her belly, like the physical effect she often feels when chasing down a poem into written form. She, therefore, decided to try her hand at working more consciously as a visual artist. She hadn’t intended to go this route but allowed herself to follow the impulse because such an “opening” manifested what she considers wonderful about all Art and Poetry: how they lead its maker and viewer/reader into new experiences. She would end up creating about a dozen sculptures before sculpting led her to drawing.

Her drawings and sculptures were just part of Six Directions, a multidisciplinary and
interactive project that encompassed several performances, exhibitions, and readings in California’s Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley, and Sonoma). Because of her initial focus on the project’s interactive aspects with audience, the Six Directions drawings are the project’s least known element. This book offers the entire series of drawings, most of which have never been seen in public.