Artwork / Archives / 2016 / Seemel’s Superstorm (After Sandburg’s Fog)

a storm as a lion
Gwenn Seemel
Seemel’s Superstorm (After Sandburg’s Fog)
2016
acrylic on canvas
13 x 19 inches

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I made this painting to represent Superstorm Sandy, but I didn’t come up with the cat reference on my own. I had the help of two poets, Carl Sandburg and Nancy Kunz. Sandburg famously wrote:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Then, in her Straight Line Wind, Kunz, who is a Long Beach Islander, speaks directly to Sandy: “Sandburg’s fog came on little cat feet. / You came to our island like a steamroller / Barreling straight though lives.”

I am often inspired by writing to make art. Both here and here, the impetus was a commission for a book cover, but in this case I was enjoying the memory of a poem my father used to read me.

a storm as a lion
detail image