Tammy Nara

Red Wing Arts in Red Wing, Minnesota is having its 20th annual Poet-Artist Collaboration. I created “Waiting for Something Unknown to be Made Clear” based on the poem, Downpour by Lisa Higgs.

Last year, a poem by Mim Kagol inspired a long stretch of my artmaking related to nature connections. This year Lisa Higgs’ poem also inspired a wide range of images. Her poem is short, but packed with imagery and metaphor. I interpreted it to be about living in the NOW. It just got done raining and it will rain again. The speaker in the poem is noticing things like bird wings scattering droplets and wiping the page dry of morning. The title of my painting is a line from the poem.

The online event on April 30, 2021 brings together the artists and the poets and anyone else who wants to listen to the poets read their poems while the art is displayed.

I started and stopped a huge number of paintings and drawings as the poem fueled my artistic process. Here are a few.