Agnes Denes
previous previous

In a time when meaningful global communication and intelligent restructuring of our environment is imperative, art can assume an important role. It can offer skillful and benign problem solving and communicate expressions of human values through its metaphors.

In works like Poetry Walk the essence of great minds and ideas are rescued from sinking into dusty memory by being brought into present relevance and fruitful use. Human values expressed with a passion create a lasting impact, they enlighten, motivate and inspire. By uniting different times and disciplines separated by specialization, a new powerful overview appears and young minds are given a chance to see anew. The writers and philosophers I have selected for Poetry Walk speak my words, lament my laments and dream my dreams. They are there forever to speak to us all. The carved granites with their high polish reflect the swaying branches of trees and people. As they lie in the ground surrounded by green grass or brown soil the stones resemble pools of moving water with the words floating on top. The edges of the stones have been chopped to resemble excavations.

Poetry Walk is a gift to Thomas Jefferson's university and its students to make them reflect, be encouraged to affect change, and perhaps see the world in a better light. I believe that artistic vision, image and metaphor are powerful tools of communication that can become expressions of human values with profound impact on our consciousness and collective destiny. I was asked to include my Manifesto from 1970 that announced my commitment to a new art form whose ideals served others, not the self.

Poets & philosophers carved into the stone include: e.e. cummings, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Gustave Flaubert, George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Tolstoy, Indira Ghandi, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Eleanor Roosevelt, Francis Bacon, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, etc.

© Copyright Agnes Denes

MANIFESTO

working with a paradox

defining the elusive

visualizing the invisible

communicating the incommunicable

not accepting the limitations society has accepted

seeing in new ways

living for a fraction of a second and penetrating light years

using intellect and instinct to achieve intuition

achieving total self-consciousness and self-awareness

being creatively obsessive

questioning, reasoning, analyzing, dissecting and re-examining

understanding the finitude of human existence and still striving
to create beauty and provocative reasoning
finding new concepts, recognizing new patterns

desiring to know the importance or insignificance of existence

seeing reality and still being able to dream

persisting in the eternal search

© l970 Agnes Denes