Sotapanna: A New Way of Seeing

An Exhibit and Publication Event

Paintings by Kyle Gallup, Poems by Ewan Turner

September 9 – October 29, 2017

Reception: October 14, 2017   6-9pm,

No.3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works

469 Main Street, Beacon NY

About Sotapanna and the paintings

These paintings are a part of a larger group of works on paper that the artist Kyle Gallup has been making since 2015. Her intent has been to adapt the Coney Island Wonder Wheel motif she’s been exploring by using an experimental approach in the studio.

With time, the motif of the wheel has organically transformed into other objects (arches and bell jars) from her more immediate surroundings, the Hudson River shoreline near her Manhattan apartment where she often views the viaduct in Riverside Park, and in her home studio, where on her window ledge a bell jar rests, housing cut-out paper birds perched on “branches” made from twigs gathered on walks. The resulting paintings offer hybrid spaces that share a common or related sense of space when the natural and built environments converge or the exterior world is brought indoors and enclosed.

The collaboration with Ewan on his chapbook Sotappana came about when he suggested that the paintings on paper she was making would be an ideal accompaniment to a group of poems he was writing about trying to find a new way to see the world. Hence, Sotapanna.

Sotapanna (Pali) literally means “one who enters the stream.” It is the first of the four stages of enlightenment.

The sidewalk carries with me all my thoughts.

It takes me apart and puts me back together again.

I am all ions and streetlight shining through me.

I am transparent, especially at night when the brightest color

is black.     

-from Sidewalk, by Ewan Turner

The book of poems Sotapanna by Ewan Turner with works on paper by Kyle Gallup is published by Riverside Press, the poet and artist’s imprint and is available for purchase during the exhibit. Please contact photobookworks@gmail.com for more information.