CHICAGO – As the popularity of the genre of jazz music evolved from its heyday in the 1920s-1930s, artistic collaborations emerged that involved onstage poetry readings accompanied by musical iterations in the genre, usually with solo saxophone or trumpet players.
Famed tenor saxophonist John Coltrane would play a rendition of his poem “A Love Supreme” by syncing the sounds of his Selmer Mark VI horn to music while sounding out those musical notes based on the handwritten verse on his music stand.
African American writer and poet Langston Hughes often collaborated with such jazz legends as pianist Thelonious Monk and bassist Charles Mingus, often leading to what became known as “jazz poetry.”
Sometimes, poets would write verse based on the jazz notes, other times musicians would improvise off poetic lyrics.
In this vein, Ukrainian artist Vasyl Savchenko has been indirectly collaborating with Polish poet and art historian Aleksander Najda to match visual images with poetic verse.
Their works are on display in the heart of Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA) through the end of August in an exhibit called “The Ground of Things.”
Mr. Najda pens verses that inspire Mr. Savchenko’s creativity for a canvas iteration using coal. They sometimes switch turns when the Lviv-born Ukrainian – currently based in the Polish port city of Gdansk – would hand over a piece of art so the lyricist can put words on paper.
While Mr. Savchenko uses charcoal as his medium, in nearly all of the works he transferred the charcoal onto silkscreen for the show. Only a panamoric 4-piece canvas was originally done in that medium.
Many of the Polish poet’s works “are in Haiku form,” UIMA curator Adrienne Kochman told The Ukrainian Weekly. “However, they work independently.”
That collaboration was borne from a chance meeting between the two in 2019 in Gdansk, Poland, a UIMA news release says.
“’The Ground of Things’ is not what one might think of as a traditional collaboration, where both consult with each other, see each other’s work, then have more conversations about what their contribution will be,” UIMA says. “Aleksander and Vasyl work cooperatively but independently.”
Most importantly, Ms. Kochman said, is that “neither edits the other’s poetry or art, nor makes suggestions about what the other’s ought to be or how to think about the process. They accept it.”
The duo’s first iteration took place in 2022-2023 in Poland.
Because of their busy travel itineraries and schedules, both share their works via various modes of communication and Mr. Savchenko could be found working on a piece of art “at 2 a.m.,” the news release said.
In the Haiku streamlined style of three-line poems written in five/seven/five syllable counts, Mr. Savchenko’s use of charcoal prefers to “say more with less,” UIMA said.
Among his many accomplishments, the Ukrainian holds two master’s degrees and is a co-founder of the Savchenko Foundation in Gdansk, his official biography says.
UIMA describes his artistic colleague as a “vocational poet who is “an enthusiast of silent films” and he says his favorite book is “Ulysses,” which was written by James Joyce and is widely considered the greatest novel of the 20th century.
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