Laina Gunsallus

“A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.” —Stanley Kunitz

I am an artist because I believe in the power of story. Stories take the whole of existence and strings together the miraculous and the mundane in a way that matters more than it did before. Stories reveal what we believe and feel quietly in the corners of our hearts, give meaning to the parts that make a whole. To be an artist is to tell the stories most deal to us. How? Well, every story begins with a narrative. The narrative provides the details, moves the story along in space and time. It tells the beginning, middle, and end. But narrative alone does not make a story-- every story has a story teller. 

A storyteller brings weight to the story. The storyteller wrestles with the internal, pushing the external narrative towards meaning. The storyteller is responsible for adding the human factor to an otherwise dry narrative— color and hope and tension and memory and belief and feeling. Like Kunitz explains, art has a way of revealing “secrets that the [artist] knows nothing of”. In other words: art reveals the artist. As one moves beyond the narrative and into the world of the storyteller, more is revealed about the creator. A narrative becomes a story as the artist works. 

Art is the pursuit of story; the artist the storyteller. 

My current work tells the story of a semester abroad. In the spring of 2014, I studied in Dublin, Ireland. Very quickly, “space” became “place” and I called it home. I fell wildly in love with the ocean, hot black tea, grace, myself, 6AM, and the boy on Percy Lane (in that order). Through works of fiber, illustration, and paint in varying degrees of abstraction, I hope to paint a holistic picture of my time on the Emerald Isle.