Interview with Shelby Lynn Lanaro
1. Art has the power to pull an observer’s attention to grand vistas and tiny, almost imperceptible details. Where does your art most often pull you and your imagination?
I find a lot of my inspiration in the natural world. In that vein, my art typically pulls me to the minute and the ordinary. It’s easy to look at the vastness of a pine tree, but it’s poetry to notice the budding of a needle—like a goosebump on the arm—in the single offshoot of a branch.
2. You have been selected to include one object that best represents you in a time capsule to be opened in a thousand years. What would it be, and how is it intrinsic to your identity?
A thin, black hair tie. I always wear one around my right wrist. When I go to pull it off, something’s about to happen. It means I’m about to have an epiphany about rhetoric with my college freshmen; it means I’m about to spend the entire afternoon prepping a dinner that will last maybe ten minutes on the plate; it means I’m about to crouch down to capture the reflection of a flower head lying on top of gravel in a puddle after a rain; it means I’m about to sit down with my laptop and write a poem that’s been trying to burst out of me like the steam in a tea kettle.
3. If you could ask any artist (past or present) to paint or photograph you, who would it be and why?
I’ve always been captivated by the works of Leonid Afremov. He captures the ambiance of a rainy day but brightens its disposition with his use of color. I can never quite keep to a single favorite color, so I appreciate his use of them all; it’s intoxicating. I’d have loved to see myself as the subject of a Leonid Afremov portrait.
Shelby Lynn Lanaro is a poet, lover of photography, and avid home chef, who firmly believes that cooking is poetry. She is the author of Yellowing Photographs and an award-winning professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Her photos have appeared in Young Ravens Literary Review and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Follow Shelby on Instagram @shelbylynnlanaro or at www.shelbylynnlanaro.com to keep up with her work.
I find a lot of my inspiration in the natural world. In that vein, my art typically pulls me to the minute and the ordinary. It’s easy to look at the vastness of a pine tree, but it’s poetry to notice the budding of a needle—like a goosebump on the arm—in the single offshoot of a branch.
2. You have been selected to include one object that best represents you in a time capsule to be opened in a thousand years. What would it be, and how is it intrinsic to your identity?
A thin, black hair tie. I always wear one around my right wrist. When I go to pull it off, something’s about to happen. It means I’m about to have an epiphany about rhetoric with my college freshmen; it means I’m about to spend the entire afternoon prepping a dinner that will last maybe ten minutes on the plate; it means I’m about to crouch down to capture the reflection of a flower head lying on top of gravel in a puddle after a rain; it means I’m about to sit down with my laptop and write a poem that’s been trying to burst out of me like the steam in a tea kettle.
3. If you could ask any artist (past or present) to paint or photograph you, who would it be and why?
I’ve always been captivated by the works of Leonid Afremov. He captures the ambiance of a rainy day but brightens its disposition with his use of color. I can never quite keep to a single favorite color, so I appreciate his use of them all; it’s intoxicating. I’d have loved to see myself as the subject of a Leonid Afremov portrait.
Shelby Lynn Lanaro is a poet, lover of photography, and avid home chef, who firmly believes that cooking is poetry. She is the author of Yellowing Photographs and an award-winning professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Her photos have appeared in Young Ravens Literary Review and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Follow Shelby on Instagram @shelbylynnlanaro or at www.shelbylynnlanaro.com to keep up with her work.