Artwork / 2016 / Seemel’s Superstorm (After Sandburg’s Fog)
Seemel’s Superstorm (After Sandburg’s Fog)
2016
acrylic on canvas
13 x 19 inches
I made this painting to represent Superstorm Sandy, but I didn’t come up with the cat reference on my own. I had the help of two poets, Carl Sandburg and Nancy Kunz. Sandburg famously wrote:
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Then, in her Straight Line Wind, Kunz, who is a Long Beach Islander, speaks directly to Sandy: “Sandburg’s fog came on little cat feet. / You came to our island like a steamroller / Barreling straight though lives.”
I am often inspired by writing to make art. Both here and here, the impetus was a commission for a book cover, but in this case I was enjoying the memory of a poem my father used to read me.
