Volume #13: CHRISTINE STRAWBERRY: On the Road 4 Love
Text and artwork by Christine Hall @ xineraquel with artwork by Paul Collins @impaulcollins

40 x 60”, 6 leaf book with custom stand
Materials for all books shown: Linen, twine, waxed thread, muslin, tyvek, webbing, bamboo and foam.

This hallucinatory pseudo biography of the writer Christine Hall reinterprets her poem, A Dove’s Wings (written when she was 15 years old) through the lens of life experience. The book follows Christine Strawberry on a cross-country journey in search for love and connection.

Bios:

Christine Hall is a writer based in Nashville, TN. She was raised in a trailer at the edge of the Adirondacks by cultist pornographers and troubadours. She hosted Poetry in the Brew, curated Studio 66, facilitated MuseX Bazaar Community Arts Center, and advocates with Arts Equity Nashville. As a poet and performing artist, she has appeared on stages including Exit/In, TSU, Third Man Records, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Belmont University, Scarritt Bennett Center, and OZ Arts, and served as editor of the Sinew poetry anthology.

Paul Collins is an artist, curator and educator in Nashville. Paul has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, Hambidge Center, Skowhegan, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Number and Native magazines.

A DOVE’S WINGS
A dove’s wings
like your hands
fly down and lay gently on my neck
then move down and lay gently on my chest
at your touch I gently rest
on my back then on my breast
Reach my hands out
into a spider’s web
push through
touch the glass
glass onion, I peel it back
you peel the shirt from your back
peach pit in your chest
grows now with the steady flow
of red juice
Kissing you is like eating a strawberry
I bite into ever so gently, ever so sweetly
ever so easy
A dove’s wing like your heart bleeds
I bring it back with my strange caress
never so numb, always so easy
@xineraquel