Jason Stoneking
The folder for “Portrait of Richard Dailey.” Each of Jason Stoneking’s handwritten portraits is later housed in a hand-made jacket.
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Statement of Homage
I have been lucky enough to call Richard Dailey my friend for over 25 years now, during which time we have collaborated on projects in numerous art forms. He has long been one of my favorite poets, but his poetic influence extends beyond the edges of the page. Rich carries the flag of poetry into all his diverse pursuits. In addition to his writing, he has made films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, installations, and through it all has never stopped viewing his work primarily as that of a poet. This has been a particularly relevant inspiration to me as I have increasingly explored experimental forms and gestures, while maintaining that my own work continues to be a kind of poetry. Rich’s expansive outlook has helped me feel like I too have permission to bend that word. I brought this up when I interviewed him for a documentary last summer, and he answered: “Please don’t ask me to define poetry. I’d say, I guess poetry is somehow connected to language… but I’m not even sure I’d go that far. I think that there’s is a poetic element of some kind in just about everything that I do, whether there’s an actual linguistic component to it or not.” My homage is a portrait of him that I wrote while watching him work in his studio in Le Lot. In the video, I recite it over some footage of Rich at his work table. Here we are making drawings, videos, performative experiments, and all of it somehow the work of two living poets.
Richard Dailey
Richard Dailey is an American writer, artist, and independent film maker, who recently moved to the south of France after 40 years in Paris. His poetry, prose, art criticism, and photographs have appeared internationally in numerous journals, his films screened at festivals worldwide. He has had one-man shows of his art at Nadine Nieszawer’s Bureau d’Art, SometimeStudio, and Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre in Paris. His poetry collections include: Dreams, Pay Dirt, Stanzas, To Hell with Reality and Back, Lockdown, and most recently Haikus Lotois. He is the subject of the 2024 documentary, Richard Dailey: inciting revery. His website is www.afterart.com
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Jason Stoneking is a writer, artist, and performer originally from the United States, who has made his home in Paris. His practice focuses on the live creation of handwritten texts, as in his recent series, Portrait Sittings, for which he observes his subject as a painter might, while composing their portrait in handwritten words, then presents them with the original manuscript he has drafted during the session. More at www.jasonstoneking.com
(Photo of Jason Stoneking by Chris Plytas)