Sonja Sekula, Grace in a Cow's Eye: a memoir

“I love words—to me writing is drawing.” So says artist Sonja Sekula. And so it is in her hands in Kathrin Schaeppi’s hands in this book in your hands. Schaeppi makes words into shapes into painting into ambiguated memoir—who is speaking? —of artist on artist. There is true pain here; attempts at survival. And there is art. This book can be read through the lens of gender: Sekula was a persecuted lesbian, an under acknowledged female artist among the big boys. Can be read through the lens of madness. Through ekphrasis. Perhaps even through the glass of the empathic. Ultimately, though, what we have here is, well, yes, it is the presence of grace. —Cara Benson

Black Radish Books announces the release of Kathrin Schaeppi’s poetry collection, Sonja Sekula. This is Schaeppi’s first full-length collection of poems, and the fourth release from the book publishing collective, Black Radish Books (BRB).

About Sonja Sekula
Swiss poète-peintre Sonja Sekula (1918-1963) was an avant-garde artist active in New York in the 40s and 50s. Her word-image combinations and ‘scratchboards’ are astounding and unique. Though Sekula exhibited in New York and was part of a broad artistic social network that included Cage, Cornell, Breton, Kahlo, Schwarzenbach, Carrington and others, her name is unfamiliar, even new. This poetic memoir, which is but a trace, is homage to this versatile, under-represented artist.

Author Statement
Each poem is ekphrastically founded on one of Sekula’s artworks. This is also memoir as remembering. Sekula’s voice, found in her secret art-books, paintings, poetry, journals, sketchbooks, and letters, is collaged into the poems. In dialogue, voices and word-pictures merged. A fine thread punctuates stages in Sekula’s life, including her multiple marginalizations, “cures,” and isolation upon return to Switzerland from New York. This is intimate, a relationship grown from sharing cultures, languages, and artistic experiences. This is also lament—and renewal.

Author Bio
Kathrin Schaeppi lives in Basel, Switzerland and studies at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zürich. She has received degrees in Women’s Studies from San Diego State University, and in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She has authored several chapbooks and a family chronicle. Creative and critical work has appeared in Dusie, Cleaves Journal, Interim, Jacket, Listenlight, Sous Rature, Tarpaulin Sky, Wheelhouse Magazine, and OSL Verlag. As the editor of ellectrique press she has issued several books including Spell/ing () Bound, a collaborative objet d’art in a limited edition.