Crowell To Share Healing Through Surimono at Stonington Library
Deer Isle resident Marnie Reed Crowell will explore the partnership between verbal and visual images at the Stonington Public Library on Saturday, Feb. 15, from Noon to 1 PM.
Crowell will share her fusion surimono collections in her presentation, “Verbal & Visual Images: 19th Century Japan and Today’s Internet.”
“Just as the body develops in response to increasing physical activity, the mind can redevelop in response to words and images of increasing complexity,” Crowell said.
Crowell is a naturalist, author and artist who suffered a traumatic brain injury while ice skating in 1999. She emerged from a coma unable to write, draw, or even make sense of printed words. But she managed to find her way back to art and poetry, starting with very simple images and words, gradually increasing their length, intricacy and subtlety.
“I believe that others who suffer from traumatic brain injury, chemo brain, PTSD, Post Lyme fog and the like can perhaps find their way back with pictured poems in stages from the very simple in the first collection to the sixth, completed at their own pace,” she said.
Crowell has a master’s degree in Biology, and she has taught in many kinds of classrooms including a one-room schoolhouse and Ogdensburg Correctional Facility. She has written books about farming, migratory birds, flycasting and poetry. Her poems have been commissioned to celebrate the opening of a church and the Penobscot Narrows bridge as well as appearing in Take Heart, an anthology of Maine poets and Poems From Here, Stuart Kestenbaum’s Maine Public Radio show.
All are welcome to attend this free event sponsored by the Stonington Public Library.