After meeting Mark Turcotte in the late fall of 2006, Kalamazoo artist Julia Haw read his book, Exploding Chippewas, and found herself especially moved by the imagery and story of his Road Noise series of poems. As the two became friends over the next few months she eventually mentioned to him that she was beginning to imagine herself creating paintings based on the poems. Turcotte confessed that he, after becoming acquainted with her work, had hoped she might be inspired to attempt such a project. They discussed the poems in detail and she began sketching her ideas.

Over the summer of 2007 Haw received support for her project in the form of an Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo. The results of her several months of hard work – one painting for each of Turcotte’s eleven poems in the series – are now on display through June 2008 in the gallery space at the Diekema-Hamann Architectural Firm at 612 S. Park in Kalamazoo. There will be a reception for the artist in the gallery beginning at 5PM on Friday, June 6th, with Turcotte reading a short selection from the poems at 6:30.

Haw’s paintings are more reactions to, rather than illustrations of, the Road Noise poems, which is exactly what Turcotte was hoping for. “In the past I had talked with a couple artists about illustrating the series as a kind of graphic novella, but nothing ever came of it,” he says. “When Julia talked about the project as an artistic response rather than a collection of illustrations, I knew she was right for it. Her energy when she described the poems was a compelling enough reason for me to say yes, but I was also intrigued by the idea that two quite different people from quite different backgrounds, and even different generations, not only found each other as friends, but were moved by each other as artists.”

“I felt privileged to work from Mark’s poems,” says the artist. “His imagery was so brilliant, so vivid in my mind’s eye. I could think of no other medium than oil to do the poems justice.” Still, Haw considers the series to be one of her most challenging as an artist. “I had never attempted such a large project before,” she says, “and it became a very inward journey for me — the whole reinterpretation process. But, I think the final paintings are some of my greatest successes. I grew as a painter.”