Titles swimming, titles spawning. A thousand joys, a thousand titles. Six titles in search of a painting. This is what my mind does, and why I needed a “titles” project. I have the good fortune to be one of twenty-eight core members of Fountain Street Gallery. The work of these dear colleagues served as the basis for this investigation of titling styles. You can go to the same source—the artists’ pages on Fountain Street’s website—and see if you agree with my award winners. If not, please nominate others, or, better yet, invent a few new categories of your own.
I won’t be so bold as to say that titling styles are windows to the soul, even if they are. But titles speak to, and about, what the artist sees and hopes to convey. In our Fountain Street web-presence midst there are titles that name specific locales (here I list a few examples in each category, in this case Parramatta Road, Lechmere Viaduct, Lundy Canyon Aspens) and others that allude to spatial relationships (Between, Entanglements, Universe Within). Some of our titles point to the form of the work (Four by Four, Nine-Patch Collage Painting) and others the color and light (Cadmium Yellow, Luminoso). Movement and rhythm make a nice showing (Allegro con brio, Oscillate, Slow Dance, Ripple Idly, Rhapsody). We have titles of familiar objects (Xbox Controller), familiar attitudes (Noncommittal) and less familiar, more technical terms (Martindale). Quite a few of our titles describe things in decline (Broken Television, Crumbling, Collapse of the Environment).
I often think of titles as short poems, which can be uplifting (It’s How We Float), epic (War in Heaven), or a way of paying homage (Waiting for Isaac Levitan After School). While I haven’t seen titling described as a form of ekphrasis (1), I believe it is. Titling uses a different creative process, in this case writing, to respond to, frame, or amplify a visual work. It’s a great pleasure for me to look at a piece and then read its title; sometimes the name reinforces what I’ve already taken in visually, while other times it adds a different, even surprising, dimension. In any event, titles are handles, and, as such, an important means by which we represent our work. It has been great fun to get to know more about my fellow Fountain Street core members in this way.
And now, without further ado, here are the prize winners!
Best alliteration: Man in Balaclava Eating Baccala and Baklava by Mia Cross
Most paradoxical: In the Presence of Absence by Allison Maria Rodriguez
Best exhortation: (Three-way tie!) Thrive Where You’re Planted by Jim Banks, Let the River Take You by Joel Moskowitz, and Light My Way Home by Marcia Wise
Best pattern: Sara Fine-Wilson, whose titles are all single-word descriptors, presented in reverse alphabetical order
Biggest stylistic range: Joseph Fontinha for titles ranging from the succinct Rain to the longest in the field, Kerosene Cans in Concrete Block Cube, Tree Stump, and Yesterday’s Fire
Best play on words: (d)Over Strait by Tatiana Flis
Most vivid: Sex Broom, Long Pink by Daniel Zeese
Most timely: Life Preserver (Because We Need One) by yours truly (2)
My personal favorite: Rock Dreaming of Rocks by Kate Carr
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!
(1) Ekphrasis often refers simply to a poem created in response to a piece of visual art. More broadly, it can describe any “intermedial creative processes,” as in a painting inspired by a piece of music, or a piece of music inspired by a poem. Krauth & Bowman, Ekphrasis and the Writing Process, The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 2018.
(2) Can you award a prize to yourself?