Because I saw Dianne Kornberg’s luscious prints in book form first, in Madonna Comix, playing against 11 poems by Celia Bland, they seem out of context on the walls of the Augen Gallery this month. I like Bland’s poems and their attempt to connect us in the present day to the Biblical Mary. And in the imaginative space they create (not fill) Kornberg’s images make perfect sense. I also like the concentration the book allows, a reader’s concentration, which can be applied both to the poems and prints. They seem to require that.
Dianne Kornberg, “Madonna Bomb”
Before turning the pages of that magnificent book, though, I should point out a few of the ways the gallery show exceeds it.