Interview with Kelly DuMar
1. If you could defy gravity just once, what would you do, and where would you go?
Yipppee! Time to free solo climb the rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. I’m afraid of heights–but since I can defy gravity, I’ll ascend without the risk of falling from the cliff.
2. Art is a force of gravity, too, pulling the viewer into a unique world. What work of art draws you into the gravity of its creation?
Marc Chagall’s Bride and Groom of the Eiffel Tower is a fascinating world to experience. The painting is an enchanting involvement with the natural world–the egg-like sun, the life-sized chicken, trees, clouds, sky; as well as the spiritual elements of angels flying and angels upside down. There is a whimsical, surreal enactment of nursery rhymes, the cow jumping over the moon; music, the fiddle, and the ascending bride being spooned by the groom in front of the Eiffel Tower. The whole sense of the painting is energy moving up, ascension, which feels energetic and hopeful.
3. If you could ask any artist (past or present) to paint or photograph you, who would it be and why?
I want Georgia O’Keeffe to paint me into the landscape of the desert of Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she had a home and lived for many years. It’s very likely she might paint me flying or sky-bound or standing or lying on the roof of her reclusive adobe home, gazing up at the starry night sky. There are artists who create landscapes of imagination from those the real ones they witness and observe, and somehow, despite being a native New Englander, I feel a tremendous spiritual affinity for the landscapes O’Keeffe created from her life as an inhabitant of Ghost Ranch.
Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s author of four poetry collections, including jinx and heavenly calling, published by Lily Poetry Review Books in March 2023. Her poems and images are published in Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Thrush, Glassworks, Flock and more. Kelly teaches a variety of creative writing workshops, in person and online, and she teaches Play Labs for the International Women’s Writing Guild and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Kelly produces the Featured Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Reach her at kellydumar.com