where art learns language
Ekphrastic Writing Event：Edgeworks
Edgeworks （Igneus Press, 2026）
Edgeworks: Ekphrastic Encounters
Preface
This chapbook began, as many living projects do, with a phone call. Carla Shafer of the Chuckanut Sandstone Writers Theater reached out to me with the vision of co-creating an ekphrastic writing workshop inside He Gong: Maps of No Return exhibition at Sophia Grace Gallery. From that invitation unfolded a weekend where poets gathered in the presence of paintings, listening with their eyes and writing with their ears.
Ekphrasis is never mere description; it is encounter. To write in response to an image is to translate pigment into pulse, to find words that do not explain but rather echo the visual field. Here, world, word, and art intersect to expand the horizon of human consciousness. Sophia Grace Gallery is committed to such syncretic endeavors—where visual and literary practices converge to create new forms of meaning.
This collection is also the fruit of community. My gratitude extends to Jannette Rosebrook, John S. Green, and the Bellingham Haiku Association, whose presence and poetic spirits gave shape to this work; to Tere Harrison, whose Prompt series has become a vital venue for poets, musicians, and performers; and to each poet who lent voice to He Gong’s maps of exile, freedom, and return.
May this chapbook be not an end but a beginning, the first of many projects where art and poetry meet to illuminate the uncharted territories of our shared imagination.
–Dr. Sophia Kidd, September 21, 2025, Ferndale, WA, USA
Sophia Grace Gallery, Founding Director
Igneus Press, Publisher
Poets in Edgeworks
Michelle Balou
Elaine Miller Bond
Paula Brown
Bridges, Green, Ortiz
Gary Evans
John S. Green
Tere Harrison
Sophia Grace Kidd
Janet Hamilton
Carol MacRury
Js nahani
Victor Ortiz
C.J. Prince
Bethany Reid
Janette Rosebrook
Carla Shafer
Aaron Silverberg
Brian Soderman
Bob Zaslow
Richard Widerkehr
Artists
All artworks in this volume are by He Gong, and were exhibitied together in Sophia Grace Gallery’s inaugeral exhibition, Maps of No Return (2025)
One of the highlights of the June 6 opening of Where the World Breaks was the presentation of a very special gift to artist He Gong.
Published by Igneus Press in 2026, Edgeworks brings together the work of Whatcom ekphrast poets. The poems originated during an ekphrastic writing event held as part of Sophia Grace Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Maps of No Return: He Gong Solo (May–August 2025), and continued to be written throughout the exhibition. Together they created an ongoing dialogue between painting and poetry while becoming a meaningful expression of cultural exchange between China and the United States.
