User:Epaulk

JS van Buskirk (Stephanie Paulk) is an artist living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. A former attorney, she now lives in Decatur with her husband, poet Randy Prunty (inventor of the Pruntiform), and their dog Bettie. For the last 20 years, JS has been writing, drawing, and creating community arts events. Among her notable acomplishments are the "Spot the Dog" series of cartoons written for the Columbia Daily Spectator during her time at Columbia University, the "Opoyol~ Trading Cards" created for the Art-o-Mat Vending Machine (invented by Clark Whittington) and her two books, Tiny Bedtime Stories and Just Got No Hustle. Van Buskirk is a long-time member of the Atlanta Poets Group, has read at the Decatur Book Festivaland her poetry has been published in the JAB (Journal of Artists' Books) and Moria She is also known for starting the Info Demo series.


 * Example of a Pruntiform:
 * My Cat Has A Red Stripey Suit Underneath His Fur
 * My cat has a red stripey suit underneath his fur
 * cat like cat domestic felis felis
 * has not usually got such a suit
 * a long time and a great many cats will come and go without suits like his
 * red at all is not usual
 * stripey is even more unlikely
 * suit yourselves, you other cats, but he had to do it
 * underneath we're all naked and there's nothing to be done but wear clothes
 * his and hers, cause
 * fur just doesn't cut it.

Two of VanBuskirk's most notable accomplishments spring from fruitful collaborations with artist and life-long friend Julie Puttgen. The first is a project known as The Infinite Variety of Similar Things. It is a collection of short poems associated with Internet Mandalas created by Puttgen from the key lines of each of the poems. Videos of each poem read aloud over an image of the associated mandala can be seen on the internet (view the first in the series). Their most recent work is “Unless and Until," a multimedia collaboration with Puttgen, composer James Carlson, and digital animator Matt Gilbert. Puttgen sent each completed painting to van Buskirk, who generated a narrative that linked them together.  They subsequently started working with Carlson and Gilbert to add music and computer animation to the project.  The show has been presented so far at the University Art Gallery at Sewanee:  University of the South and Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta.  It will open at the Bruce Gallery at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania on Feburary 2, 2011.

VanBuskirk has also been fascinated with Twitter as a medium for poetry. She was recognized in a special "Twitter" edition of OCHO for the poem below. She has also written 140 character versions of all the works of Shakespeare, which can be found on her website.


 * Romeo and Juliet
 * R&J: Boy meets girl, boy kills girl’s cousin&gets banished, girl fakes death, boy thinks it’s real, kills self, girl wakes & kills self


 * Love's Labour Lost
 * LLL: Men make a big deal out of the life of the mind & living rough, but court pretty women anyway. The women say “Maybe” and leave.

Reversible Sonnet for Twitter by JS van Buskirk


 * 14 So you can read it now from front to back
 * 13 I made it backwards first, an easy hack
 * 12 We find new ends to justify the means
 * 11 When current methods leave us uninspired
 * 10 Those well-trod paths are boring, old and tired
 * 9 Now all of us have seen all of the scenes
 * 8 But don’t let me get meta on you now
 * 7 This is the middle line, the hinge, the spring
 * 6 I could say more about what is this thing
 * 5 You see the what, but not the why or how
 * 4 This space is made for words in such small scope
 * 3 When I have two more lines I will have done
 * 2 That later you will say it’s just begun
 * 1 A Twitter sonnet offered with some hope:

See also:
 * 1) Collaborator Profiles at "Unless and Until" - http://www.unlessanduntil.info/collaborators.html
 * 2) JS VanBuskirk's blog at http://opoyul.blogspot.com/
 * 3) Artist Julie Puttgen's reflections on the paintings in her cloudmapping collection - http://art.sewanee.edu/art/2009/09/30/puttgen-comments-on-cloudmapping/
 * 4) Information on Unless and Until at the Whitespace Gallery web page - http://whitespace814.blogspot.com/
 * 5) An Infinite Variety of Similar Things - http://www.turtlenosedsnake.com/ivost.htm
 * 6) Commentary on Unless and Until = http://www.peterlu.org/girihtiles/content/girih-tiles-animation

Reference List

External Links
 * 1) Just Got No Hustle - http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/387791/
 * 2) Tiny Bedtime Stories - http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/382807/
 * 3) Unless and Until - www.unlessanduntil.info
 * 4) Tray Butler, "A bureaucracy of one:  an edgy lecture series, radical trading cards and the mystery of J.S. Van Buskirk," CreativeLoafing.com, January 29, 2003.  - http://clatl.com/atlanta/a-bureaucracy-of-one/Content?oid=1240091
 * 5) Wyatt Williams, "Culture Surfing: Matt Gilbert's Animations at Whitespace," Creativeloafing.com, May 22, 2010. - http://clatl.com/culturesurfing/archives/2010/05/24/art-seen-matt-gilberts-animations-at-whitespace
 * 6) Thomas Bell, "Leafing through the Atlanta literary scene," Creativeloafing.com, August 19, 2004 - http://clatl.com/atlanta/leafing-through-the-atlanta-literary-scene/Content?oid=1249275
 * 7) Shelley McClaren, "Cloudmapping: Paintings by Julie Puttgen," Events and Exhibitions at the University Art Gallery, Sewanee:  University of the South. August 28, 2009.  - http://gallery.sewanee.edu/?p=192
 * 8) Navigation by Landmark, JS van Buskirk and )ohn Lowther.  Moria Poetry Journal, volume 12, issues 1,2, & 3, summer and fall 2009, winter 2010 - http://www.moriapoetry.com/buskirklowther.html