Baltimore Sonnets

Glyph and Gospel by Suzanne Coley Love's Not Time's Fool , 2025, Suzanne Coley In a recent production of  The Merry Wives of Windsor  at the Globe, I had the pleasure of seeing the minor characters deliver their lines in regional dialects. One actor, in particular, spoke as though singing hymnal gospel, in tones that evoked monastic chant or Catholic liturgy. He received a standing ovation. Perhaps it was the brilliance of the performance—or perhaps it was the first time Shakespeare had ever sounded like that. I looked him up afterward. On Instagram, the actor Samuel Creasey wrote, “The summer of dreams at the Globe.” That performance affirmed what I had been trying to do: to read Shakespeare not just as text, but as sound. Sound that resonates from the deepest part of the soul. Sound that remembers: church bells, complex organ music, spiritual vortices, harmonies composed of both joy and despair. In Shakespeare's sonnets, especially, I hear the  diminution,  a ...

Palazzo Esposizioni Roma What a beautiful exhibition in the heart of Rome. The marriage of art, fashion, and innovative vision by designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Dolce&Gabbana's Exhibition, Dal Cuore Alle Mani ( From the Heart to the Hands ), 14 May - 13 August 2025.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom:       Shakespeare's sonnet 116 Hand-painted linen fabric with drawings and linocut prints by Suzanne Coley for a limited edition of books inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. 💖sc  

 A day in Florence, buying paints and taking a moment to enjoy the view.

Research in Italy Milan, Italy

 The Marriage Of True Minds Working on Shakespeare's sonnet 116 has made me re-examine how I construct books using textiles. When analyzing the text of this sonnet, I took a deep dive into the history of thought and knowledge. How information is documented and re-analyzed each generation. What has changed? What has remained the same? Looking at the text in this light, in the now , but not forgetting the historical past lingering in the shadows, I realized that the poem was much more complex than I had initially thought. And, instead of working on it daily for four weeks, I worked on it daily for twenty weeks.  Here are some WIP imagery inspired by Sonnet 116: Linocut printed onto a quilted page. A few textile pages waiting to be sewn into a book. Silkscreening sonnet 116 onto hand-painted fabric by Suzanne Coley .