Lani Burshtein
The Beam
Gymnastic jargon’s cryptic core:
Illusion, Arabian, Gainer, wolf turn.
Secrets elucide astonishing acts.
The geometry of movement;
Sinuous muscles, pointed toes, flexing
Arms and sequined teenage bodies.
A gymnast’s work is their body;
Their body of work, a marble core,
Steely quads, flesh unfearing and flexible
Cartilage wrapped in courage, turning
power into air, music into movement.
A circus song or cabaret act.
The mount; entr’acte
entrancing, the beam a foreboding
board wrapped in foam and suede. Movement
and stasis; a gymnast hesitates, her core
tight and limbs extended, taciturn
expression as she leaps into flux.
Her audience is little; flocks
do not gather, and acts
of daring turn little profit. Turn
and look: bodies
fill a quarter of the stands, a core
audience of family and friends, unmoving
masses disinterested by women’s movement.
Profits are inflexible.
Gymnasts mount the beam for scores,
for art, for jouissance, never acting
for glory alone, but glory arrives in turn.
They are faith and physics embodied
by a sixteen-year-old body
less than five feet tall, moving
under silent command; eyes forward, turn
to face the judges, fingers flex,
toes must point against deduction. Act
confident, act poised. A salute is her only encore.
A dismount concludes her turn. She smiles in reflex.
The judges act to translate value from the immovable
poise at the core of her compact body.
The Original Psychonaut
Lewis Carroll, doula to the psychedelic dream
Excavated secret worlds while dipping oar in stream
Sombre tweed in sepia, cerebral to his classes
And yet—within Victoriana’s rigid world—ekstasis
Raised within the confines of the parlour and the parish
Stammering his timid hymns, reclusive and embarrassed
Carroll—Mr. Dodgson—played the checkerboard of wonder
To well amuse his Liddell muse, he tore logic asunder
Penned a tale of senseless chance, a mind-expanding route
Kaleidoscopic koans scribed a century too soon.
And even as he pondered abstract formulae in bed
A grain, a seed, an embryo led to the Grateful Dead
A bloom inside a brilliant mind unfolded into theory
But neither Euclid nor Descartes explain Timothy Leary
Lewis Carroll, prophet of the mushroom and the rose
Teach the means by which you psychedelicized your prose
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| Brittany Vogel is an award-winning, New Jersey-based painter known for her bold color and beautifully expressive line. Her Powerful Women series has struck a chord well beyond the gallery walls, earning inclusion in multiple exhibitions including a Monmouth Museum x Smithsonian Exhibition and coverage in numerous press outlets, including Yahoo! News and feature spreads in TapInto and 07030 Magazine.
Vogel's work lives in public spaces as much as private collections. She created a 12-foot interactive mural, Suffragists Marching, in the Columbus Circle subway station, and has delivered artist talks at the Bruce Museum and the Hoboken Historical Museum. Her achievements include the competitive Merit Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York and features in three consecutive Monmouth Museum Annual Juried Exhibitions. She has mounted solo shows of both her Powerful Women and Order vs. Chaos series in New York City and New Jersey.
Whether she's covering a subway wall or a canvas, Vogel's aim is the same: command attention from across the room, then reward a closer look with a rich, layered story worth lingering over.
Brittany continues to paint, exhibit, and expand the Powerful Women series from her studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, adding new women and new stories to the collection.
For additional information, please visit www.BrittanyVogelArt.com.
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