As both a mixed media painter and a poet, my work cross-pollinates, stimulating a close correspondence between these art forms. Just as words, sounds, and images rooted in emotional memory may trigger the composition of a poem, collage elements move me to build layers and texture, to respond to textual and cultural evidence, and to justify a pack-rat sensibility, all the while engaged in a visceral construction of space. Growing up in the home of an architect and a violinist clearly influenced my aesthetic. Early exposure to the art of architecture encouraged my interest in spatial relationships, taught me to read elevations and visualize their 3-D intentions, and, at construction sites, to appreciate the evolution of concept to form. At home, music played where words ended, stirred reflection, roused layers of emotional response, and altered the sense of place and time. Together, these ingredients fostered an affinity for abstraction and design. In The Poetics Of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard explains that adults often seek to recreate the rooms they inhabited as children, for these spaces recall the power of imagination that defines early life. I recognize this instinct as one of the impulses that guides my work. I’m attracted to the tactile quality of mixed media not only because it makes visible what the writing process hides (ie. the labor of revision maintains a palpable presence in a finished work), but also because it embodies the movement of perception and discovery. At the end of the day--or night—my paintings and poems rely on juxtaposition, metaphor, and the process of association, among other things, to express some sense of order, humanity, and emotional intent.

JACQUELINE DEE PARKER was born in New York City and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, with concentrations in creative writing and studio art, and spent a year studying painting and drawing in the Paris studio of Ruth Francken. She received an MFA in Creative Writing with a secondary emphasis in Painting and Drawing from Louisiana State University, where she has been an instructor since 1993, teaching formerly in the Department of English and presently in the School of Art. In addition to teaching courses in composition, poetry, and drawing, she has worked as a freelance graphic designer and, earlier, as a layout artist, proofreader, waitress, and artist’s model. Parker’s poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies, including Atlanta Review, The Southern Review, Eclipse Literary Arts Journal, Chelsea, and American Diaspora: Poetry of Exile, among others, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of a 2007 Artist Fellowship from the Louisiana State Division of the Arts. Parker lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with her husband, cellist Dennis Parker, and their children.