In this case the artist attempts to suggest that inspiration may arise from the intersections of physical form: printed characters, engraving, photo superimposition, and precursor hybrid artistic forms such as “visual poetry” (an early 20th century conception whereby written poetry was actually formed into recognizable shapes or line abstractions.) Included in this display are various examples of the Maya Lin convention of incised print into stone as a solemn memorial - but then crassly appropriated by commercial interests to advertise course offerings, product lines, and objects that replicate the war memorial simply as a means to record large amounts of wording.

Jane Irish took these possibilities and deployed them in her mural work, The Conversation, via the poetry of Vietnam veteran poets to create a narrative, left to right, of various events of war resistance. In the panel reproduction above this case, the viewer may notice the imaged work of the 18th century Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong, whose actual life travels Jane Irish tried to shadow during her second visit to Vietnam – painting plein air canvases at each stopping point in the poet’s life. Items in this case as they inspired images in The Conversation might be thought of as “function follows form!” View the Full Case.