Over the summer, The Muckenthaler’s 2020 Artist-in-Residence poet Katharine Zaun started the Found Poetry Project, which invited community members to submit found poetry for a group exhibition.  Found poems are created by using an existing page of text (such as a page from a magazine, newspaper, or book) and remaking it by circling, underlining or blacking out words.

The installation is now on display outdoors on The Muck lawn…with a twist.  One side of the installation has been left blank along with sticky notes, pencils, and chalk as a space for visitors to leave their own poems or thoughts.

The display design itself was done intentionally to help visitors have a feeling of connection, even as they interact with it individually.  Katharine describes her thoughts behind the process. “The pixelated effect of the painted cardboard background is representative of the digitally saturated quality of our lives during this pandemic.  We chose cardboard to paint on, rather than painting directly on the mural’s wood panels, because we wanted to stay with the idea of the found poems by using found objects, too.  The found poems stand out against the cardboard background to portray how we’ve attempted to piece together this new normal and find connection in new ways—find new narratives that give shape to this strange and isolating time.”

For more information on this project, visit: www.themuck.org/found-poetry-project.