May 2022
Reading Nilly’s Poetry in Her Garden
Curated by Anna Stump, held on February 27, 2022
NILLY GILL
Poet and Painter
Writing my bio always throws me like a sudden wave questioning who am I? As a child I have been exposed to different forms of music, surrounded by a variety of languages spoken, humor, historical tragedies, tastes of foods and their aroma, arts, literature, actors & poets with different accents, a melting pot of survivors and visionaries building a new life, I consider myself bicultural.
Born in Israel
1964 Emigrated to USA
1970-78 Lived in South Africa
Returned to USA until present.
Art Studies:
Israel - Jaffa / Early studies with painter mentor Eliahu Gat, at his Atelier in old Jaffa.-
Israel - Tel-Aviv / Hebrew literature poetry-studies with poet Nathan Zach- Zach has had a great influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry as editor and critic, as well as translator and poet. Internationally known for political mindset as well.
South Africa / Studies with painter Bernice Michelowinstructor - Johannesburg School of Art.
South Africa / Studies with Bill Ainslie , Painter-Educator- Humanitarian at his property studio and its surroundings, a lush garden for outdoor studies in Johannesburg. All through years of Apartheid.
USA / UCSD Studies with painter professor, writer, film critic Manny Farber
2013 / I joined FIG Group and participated in several group exhibitions, learning about myself as a woman artist/poet and feminism, I have been grateful ever since to the professional creative and supportive women members!
2022 / My appreciation having a recent successful project: First FIG/Nilly event reading my poetry in my garden, curated by Anna Stump.
Imagining Frida and Nilly
By the way, below is my son's toy suitcase where I hid two small Ginger Bush branches in 1978 when we left South Africa and returned to San Diego. My son Daniel put these stickers on the suitcase, we did crawl at Sudwala caves….he still has it now!
Editor’s Note: Nilly kindly gave me a cutting of her amazing Ginger Bush (Iboza in Zulu) and she sent this too. The little cutting is thriving!! It will produce the fragrant lavender blossoms that perfume Nilly’s patio.
Read by Nilly Gill
[by Federico Garcia Lorca - Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.
Read by Nilly Gill
“A poem I have written shortly after arriving to Johannesburg South Africa with my 9 months
daughter Iris and her dad, here is my startled early response to apartheid.”
1971
Johannesburg - City of Gold
In the dawn they come
Cursed for camouflaging
With brown earth
Cursed, for reminding humanity
Of its ancestors.
In the dawn come they
Hunched with colored blankets
Hard soles on hard asphalt
The day will count its pennies
Hard fists will wound the earth to bleed gold
Its sparkle hurts the hungry eyes.
At sunset, when roofs bathe in dim red
They leave, loading old trains
With unanswered questions -
With colored blankets -
And faces.
Read by Anna Stump
“Below my response to the murder of George Floyd”
Smoke Signals
6/2/2020
Vivid dreams I cannot draw or paint
Television visuals, radio words hitting hard
Like sharp icicles, sounds of masked crowds closing in
Calling for justice painfully defining Murder First Degree, Guilty 4 in uniforms
It takes to much to truly revolt between the flames
Burning emotions sending smoke signals
Close to all homes in different languages and skin colors
A human virus with real faces
Trying breaking the unbreakable hug chain of holding one another
Imagine innocence flexible but tough as steel
Imagine waves old and new wrapping us all momentary to take noter breath and swim away
It’s a new day to imagine learning my eyes the pain in my chest,
The art of human survival from caves to NOW, a new form may be reborn out of debris…
…the cooling ashes
Ready by Linda Litteral
“Responding to public reaction to Floyd’s murder / Cultural personal response”
Release
6/26-28/2020
Release tight grip/hold
- responding
Feelings growing like thick roots
In my neck running out of space
In my head
Release responding
Like a clock ticking
The illusion of orchestrating the outside of my skin
How to speak persist staying tall
Or simply being for justified’s rights
Read by Anne Mudge
“Written in the year my daughter Iris died”
Angst
7/2/2012
Larva of anger spinning-
Imaginary brush strokes caressing contained angst
Invisible thorns conniving questions removing layers
All under the deadly mask of kindness
If it’s all about love
Where is this invisible force?
A dream, a word, a torch in the black sky
A story inside the picture — the classic lighthouse showing the way
I loved escaping on that route as a child
Remembering gazing at a beautiful kitsch - green trees hugging a road
Going nowhere - somewhere - roundabout
Red Riding Hood braving her little self,
She appeared in my poem some years ago
When a man was hiding in wolf clothing
Kept replaying her story spinning her red hood round and round
Playing fear playing brave the classic adventure in different stories,
Different years and other places.
Perhaps she is back, or maybe never left, perhaps she crossed the forest
All by herself
The night has thickened, its weight is pressing against my temples
Shutting this day —
Until the morning
Read by Kirsten Aaboe
“About my personal world with cultural associations”
Tonight’s Poem
10/22/2020
Diffused reality in this busy personal world of hidden beings,
A few words, mostly silence.
Dreams orchestrated deep below, no exit.
Waking up breathless, a ritual of pouring coffee clearing dreads of any kind
Hard being self sufficient in large blocks of time
Hearing a critical digital voice from nowhere … “delete self pity, delete burdening others, empty
Expectations or wishing too much.”
It’s a busy personal world of hidden beings, a few words, mostly silence.
Remembering my poetic vision of laundry hanging on a Tel-Aviv roof line long ago
Looking up at thin electric wires sketched above buildings creating a lyrical space
Time was endless
Neighbors would drop by unexpectedly to borrow sugar or an egg
No phones
The social unexpected was ok then.
How to sew cultures and time… stories hanging on lines… silent words pushing one another
Trying to say: “It’s going to be ok”…
The End.
Read by Cindy Zimmerman
“About the death of my sister a year ago”
The Cord Fell Apart
1/15/2021
(Poem written 1/16-23/2021)
The cord was cut abruptly
Something snapped inside, feeling the deep tear while holding the
Phone talking with my son, facing the news
Scattered thoughts words, bound in uncountable pieces of history -
Puzzling colors & texture, the hurt followed densely demanding,
Threatening
I stayed away flimsily attached, not a word just a beating heart …
I knew it was there without the possibility of crossing the road
Like the old song on a 78 RPM record “A river of no return” …
Playing scratchily on my ancient record player
This sudden grief appeared politely in an email on Jan. 15, 2021,
After a long dread knowing it’s coming
Our cords of a shared womb 7 years apart - split widely spreading like
Seaweed branches in the mediterranean ocean, they grew collecting
Salty momentous through years of world & land and family wars, a
Blend of survival scars, remembering the dead, mixed with painful
Irrational combat through envy of long ago, years of contrasting
Closeness, our personal history went silent two days ago.
Entering a foreign new grief space
Reliving my old loss in its larger single minded finality, my sister.
Read by Irene Abraham
“While gardening I fell on the hard sidewalk holding the pruners - and kindness of a neighbor”
After the Fall
8/12/2019
The stillness after the shock
Remembering loss of gravity
In slow motion
Just days ago.
Clutched garden pruners, branches
Dropping off my fingers scattered
In mid-air falling
Sudden loss of control lurking
Round and round
Gravity lets loose
Heavy descent on hard asphalt
Public sidewalk
Under my back
Teeth clenched
As my head completed the fall.
First experience
Of total inability to rise up
Just days ago.
Surrendering to a sudden unknown unfamiliar upside down planet.
A light beige car slowing down, a kind strong man eyeing me
Checking how coherent I was
Then lifted me gently.
We walked up my steep driveway
Unashamed I held his arm totally trusting his help.
Just a few days ago.
Remembering a theatrical expression I once held close to heart:
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”
Strange falling onto a cast role so unrehearsed
Perhaps invisible curtains open and close at all times
Read by Alise Sheehan
“About heat and isolation mixed with overripe figs”
Heat
9/5/2020
Isolation and heat
The no way out syndrome
Ripe figs bursting their pink sugary insides
For whoever drops flies by
Milky sap squirts fingers picking fruit, marking its burning territory
Fans above and sideways blowing warm air casting illusion of coolness
Isolation and heat don’t mix
Just hover heavily, an almost touchable substance,
Shoots words out an old artillery cannon, a movie prop.
A poem.
Read by Nilly Gill
Flower grows in Fear
In the midst of fear grows a flower
My window framed heavy clouds
Hovering
Over a tunnel
Of brilliant colors
Spilling
Across a blinding sun
Dimming
My fear combatting inside its ambushed brain
Surrounded by hypnotic sweet scented
Fleshy green leaves from exotic lands
Soldiers of the night
Winning
Outlined shadows
Whispering “We are here with you all night long….”
Read by Stacie Birky Greene
“The poem about my processing the world’s phenomena”
Pandemic Mystery
5/3/2020
Is this world’s pandemic
Attaching itself to a dream state
As I wake up from disturbing familiar and unfamiliar visuals
I dreamt I tried picking up a tiny baby needing care — in next vision I saw it dissected - my
subconscious wondering about repair, then a vision of both my parents walking forward
appeared
Are these buried mirrors of the self, time distorted their reflections as an old circus
Is our present medical legal requirement of being apart, recreating, editing our interpretation of
the real? Past and present mingle, all is one history, nothing discarded.
Yet as many say we are in the unknown, unfamiliar, unprotected, new exploration and waiting.
Can I rearrange, erase and recreate newer visuals in my dream state?
So far no psychological tools worked.
Perhaps it’s like the little girl watching me behind the screen door
Rather than face to face, just the other day.
What would Einstein say?
Read by Minnie Valero
“About my subconscious demons in dreams”
Dreaming
10/24/2021
Facing the new day with heavy eyes
Waking from a load of dreams
Stories pressing on my eyelids
A ghost like subconscious tells
Create fragments of the real — improvising new happenings in color
Tormenting details building their own theatrical stages mirroring
Familiarity, the dead is alive in my movies I am forced to interact
Deeper and deeper as the sleep is shaken
Early sun rays surrounding with unseen clocks pointing
Hours of Now, light framing windows, the hidden self.
A door is temporarily shut, leaving the unforgiving memory behind
In a vanishing slit of logic.
Read by Kathi McCord
It’s a New Day
Winter 2021
New old worlds closing opening
Folded tight like a fist — fragile like petals
Remembering musty curtains on stages
Floral wall paper in Tel-Aviv
Leading my eyes following dreaming, a toy-less world
Late last night I started descending down and down
Losing my grip of my place, my core,
My version of Alice in Wonderland spinning shrinking
Then, suddenly listening to words, watching
Old moving images of Rainer Maria Rilke
Mixed heritage stirred in a pot — Europe, Middle East, Africa
Culture droplets coming into focus,
My world back in time before the newer world emerges
It was four days ago.
Climbing up to where?
To being her once again
Returning from high tide, damp sand,
Rushing engulfing foamy waves
Warning to retreat
Drinking fresh coffee
Connecting and retreating again
Start a new dateless day —
No expectation
Read by Nilly Gill
Unplanned Forest of Hours
1/3/2022
Searching myself
Marking lines
Tips of colors
Unplanned forest of hours
Damp weeds, Damp steps
Yielding soft soil
Tunnels of gophers deep under my
My shoes
Familiar bike rider
Calling my name: “Are you still here?”
Replying: “Yes, I am still here”
Thinking silently
I am rooted here
As deep as the rose
Long ago her name was:
“Fragrant Cloud”
Night is descending
Last sunset view vanished with the green flash
The hurt and loss still gathering
Like shadows
A bitter aftertaste.
Imagine brushing it with my worn out broom
My Mental yard
Temporarily swept
Retreating indoors
Once again.
It’s another day.
Exhibition Updates
Phes Gallery 2022
Opening: September 11, 2022
Message to FIG artists from Ellen and Paul:
Paul and I are looking forward to showing the FIG artists in September.
Here is the schedule:
Submissions due by August 1
Delivery of the chosen works: September 1-4
Opening of the show: September 11 with reception that day from 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Let us know if you have any questions. It would be good if the artists visited the gallery soon to see
how their work will fit.
Warmly,
Ellen & Paul
Hyde Gallery 2023
March 20-April 25, 2023
Climate Change is our chosen theme from those suggested by Alex, the gallery director
Linda would like to pair with a nonprofit that is in line with our topic to raise money during the show.
Please present nonprofits you’re connected to with your ideas.
There will be opportunities for Lectures/Workshops/Artist Talks would come with a stipend. Any
ideas are welcome.
A brainstorming/planning meeting at
Space 4 Art (16th & J St., SD)
in Linda’s Studio on June 5 from 2:00-4:00.
