“Office Space” (Old Post Office Pavilion, 6th Floor, Washington, DC)

I have been making collages for as long as I can remember: countless pages from “16” magazine tacked up above my bed (John Stamos in a mint-green polo against a pink background, C. Thomas Howell with a horse, Matt Dillon as Dally in The Outsiders), several magazines’ worth of phrases and pix on the door to my single my junior year of college. I like the idea that a collage is at once a fractured yet coherent narrative. Each of the elements belongs together yet the connections aren’t always explicit; they hover , instead, slightly out of reach of the tongue. (I’ve never been uncomfortable—as some poets I’ve known can be—with the idea of  borrowing/appropriating/stealing-with-acknowledgement from others to articulate my own story as poem.)  This particular wall touches on the deep affection I have for my day family, George Clooney, my heritage as a New Yorker and an Asian Indian, the Alvernian Drama Society, the aesthetic influence of Billie Holiday on my work, the price women pay for being  artists, and the properties of  light .  . to name just a few threads.