Sherry Chandler

The Writer’s Almanac choice for today is a poem called “Putting in a Window” by John Brantingham from Putting in a Window published by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, Kentucky.

You can read and/or listen to the poem here. The Writer’s Almanac airs on WUKY at 7:00 pm, just before Fresh Air.

Photographer, physicist, poet Alan MacKellar’s mordançage photographs will be on exhibit in the Lexington Central Library Gallery from November 12, 2005 to January 2, 2006.

Entitled “Subtle Hues,” the exhibit also features work of sculptor Russell Bellamy and ceramicist Marianne Brown.

You can read one of Alan’s poems here and get a look at more of his mordançage photos here and here.

The work on the left is entitled “Horse Mania.”

I dropped by to see this show last night on the way to “Good Night and Good Luck” at the Kentucky Theater. I’ve known Alan MacKellar, would venture to say we’ve been friends, for about 5 years now, but this is the first time I’ve seen any significant collection of his photography. I have been impressed by the tenacity with which he works on a poem, the same tenacity that he needed, I’d guess, in his work as a theoretical physicist. A willingness to push intelligence to new limits, to think in new ways. The result of that intelligence in his photography is sometimes delightful, sometimes thought-provoking, always engaging.

Physicists must see space and light in ways that most of us do not. I think also of Cleland Johnson’s house on Watts Barr Lake, a house he designed and built himself.

The sculpture is also worth seeing — bemusing and amusing work in plexiglass, which fits the Central Library Gallery pretty well. That gallery has too many windows, too much reflection. The sculptures are pretty sturdy, too. I saw a red/black-haired girl giving one “horse” a vigorous ride on its spring base, a thing I would have loved to do but would not have dared, because it is “art.”