Spotlight: Alison Grace Koehler
Alison Grace Koehler is a poet, stained glass artist, and vibrant member of the Parisian artistic community. She co-opened a stained-glass workshop in the 13ème with the Atelier La Couleur du Verre, and her work has been featured in numerous festivals, exhibits, and publications, including Paris Lit Up . In anticipation of the release of her first book, Stained Glass Poetry, along with her upcoming performance on PLU Presents, we talked with Alison about her artistic origins, visual fragments, and the fusion of glass and words.
“I have learned to hold what I cannot foresee.” Alison performs at the Bespoke soiree, photo by Sabine Dundure
1. How did you become an artist? Can you tell us a little about your artistic journey?
I spent one year inside a Montessori preschool, where there were lots of learning toys and other things to play with. There was also one quiet corner of the room where we could sit and draw. I remember this is where I always wanted to be. Which is only to say the desire began early on.
My dad is a writer, so I grew up around books, and with a deep awareness of the value of words. My mother wasn't an artist by profession, but she played the oboe, and would fill the margins of legal pads with her sketches. She always encouraged my engagement in its multifaceted spaces. When I was about nine she drove with me through a blizzard just so I'd have an opportunity to be a supernumerary in Das Rheingold at the Lyric Opera. She died when I was 11, and I know that this loss is also an inextricable part of my artistic origins.
Just before graduating college, I met a Danish artist who invited me to spend a summer in her studio in Copenhagen. So, I packed a suitcase and left for Europe, where I've spent the greater part of the last decade. In Denmark I learned how to make frames and found a job cutting wood and glass. I loved the way the pieces of glass would sometimes shatter.
A year later I moved to France and, by chance, met a stained glass artist who eventually taught me some of the basics of this craft. I decided to apply for more formal training in France, though after that I understood that I wanted to find a more painterly way to engage with the medium. Afterwards, I spent a few months in Edinburgh helping to archive Scottish stained glass. This was my first time living in an Anglophone environment after quite a few years away, and I re-discovered the impulse and need to write (poetry). Returning to France I sought out an anglophone community of writers, and discovered the open mic scene, writing groups and publications from Paris Lit Up. Meanwhile I joined a stained glass collective or 'pepiniere' in Paris called Atelier Lengai, where I continued to develop my glass work.
One year ago I co-opened a stained glass studio in the 13th, with Atelier La Couleur du Verre, where I continue to create today. I like to think of this work as "Stained Glass Poetry," which is also the title of my fist book, recently published by Paris Heretics.
“I weave with a hammer, with a fire, with air that cools time.”
2. Where do you find inspiration? How does it weave its way into your artistic process?
I find inspiration in the broken, in the fragmented, in color, in reflection, in the interpersonal...to generalize what in a moment should could feel impossibly singular. I weave with a hammer, with a fire, with air that cools time.
3. So what would you say art is for?
Art coaxes us into infinite depths and expanses that are our own as they are the world.
4. What have you learned through your artistic journey? Any lessons to share?
I have learned to hold what I cannot foresee, and jump into spaces lit with possibility, even when I don't know where they will lead. I'm still learning how to force myself through the mundane that can hold other concrete and differently obtainable, differently valuable plateaus. I suppose both the delicious and the difficult can be illusory and worthwhile.
“I like to see the stained glass pieces I make as poems that float over and inside their environment, changing their color, tone, narrative, or emotional shape.”
5. How does your glasswork impact your poetry and vice versa? Can you tell us more about their relationship to each other?
I like to see the stained glass pieces I make as poems that float over and inside their environment, changing their color, tone, narrative, or emotional shape. Sometimes I paint text onto the shards, words I have composed, or those chosen from another.
I've written many poems that began with a reflection on a moment of stained glass making. My poems themselves often contain visual fragments, and fragments of thought and feeling, color and light, like a stained glass window. At least this is what I reach for. I also perform these poems while assembling glass, breaking glass, projecting images of stained glass onto my body and environment. I hope to continue to uncover new ways in which the worlds of poetry and stained glass can merge and grow.
6. Could you share some experiences collaborating with your artistic community?
Verse of April is a beautiful project, started by Carrie Chappell, who is a strong voice inside the anglophone community of poets in Paris. Every day during the month of April, for the last five years, she asked a different poet to respond to their favorite poem with some form of homage. When asked, I made a stained glass window inspired by Mark Doty's poem 'Nocturne in Black and Gold' which is itself a sort of homage to Whistler's painting of that same name. This painting is one of my favorites. The whole project is an inventive and original way to unite many different visions and voices of today and across time.
Alison at the Irruzioni Festival in Italy; photo taken by Helen O’Keeffe
Another project I was honored to take part in was for an event called 'Bespoke Soiree' organized by Jason Stoneking. He writes singular 'bespoke' books by hand, to a single person, and keeps no copy. He organized an evening in which anyone who was given or who had commissioned one of his books was invited to read from it aloud, or make a work of art inspired by their book. I collaborated with musician Ludwin Bernatane and photographer Yann Lagoutte for a performance that included a stained glass window containing text from Stoneking's book, the breaking of glass, and the reading of fragments of his text, eventually intertwined with my own. The entire evening was full of memorable artwork, and was impeccably organized, a rare feat in itself.
“My poems themselves often contain visual fragments, and fragments of thought and feeling, color and light, like a stained glass window.”
7. We're so excited for the release of your first book, Stained Glass Poetry. Could you tell us a little more about the project?
Stained Glass Poetry merges light, color and language, and is my first collection of poetry. In conversation with the text are photos, taken by Yann Lagoutte, of pieces I've made, reflected onto skin and floating through impossible spaces. The book is being released this week by Paris Heretics, in a limited edition run, which will include a piece of glass, and an additional poem insert. Each book will be signed by both myself and photographer Yann Lagoutte.
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