A Philly artist’s images of cotton inspire new song cycle

Pleasure, pain, and struggle take turns as the emotional focus in John E. Dowell’s images of cotton.

The Philadelphia artist-photographer conjures softness and a billowy euphoria in “Angels are Coming,” whose white tufts and pixilated colors spread like confetti. And then there’s “The Proper Headstone,” where cotton bolls are blown up to giant proportions and press down upon graves.

As if these emotions aren’t powerful enough by themselves, Dowell’s dream-like visuals spin into other art forms this weekend as the inspiration for Cotton, a new song cycle by composer Damien Geter for mezzo-soprano and baritone being premiered by renowned vocalists Denyce Graves and Justin Austin. The new work will be performed Saturday at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral in West Philadelphia.

All of the songs’ texts refer to cotton, which Dowell, 81, calls a “soft, dangerous beauty,” referring to both its physical properties and its role in the lives of enslaved people in America.

“The thing is that when we look at cotton, it’s really beautiful,” says the artist, a professor emeritus of printmaking at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture whose works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other galleries. “But it’s dangerous. If you grab it, because it has spikes and everything, it’ll tear your hands up and you’re bleeding. At the same time, the image of cotton for me carries 400 years of torture.”

Dowell and Philadelphia art song producer Lyric Fest hit on the project after a chance encounter. Dowell had just had double-knee replacement surgery about six years ago when he asked his church to send a visiting companion. It turned out to be Suzanne DuPlantis, Lyric Fest’s co-artistic director, who soon got to know Dowell’s work and began thinking about working together.

“You’ve got to remember, I’m an artist. I’ve been around. Very few times have people seen your art and done something about it,” said Dowell in his North Philadelphia studio this week.

“There was this feeling that this would be something — we didn’t know what it was going to be,” DuPlantis said.

The collaboration has become Lyric Fest’s most ambitious project to date. DuPlantis and co-artistic director and pianist Laura Ward sent Dowell’s photographic collages to a group of poets. Lauren K. Alleyne, Charlotte Blake Alston, Nikki Giovanni, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Trapeta B. Mayson, Glenis Redmond, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Alora Young each responded with a poem, which (either in part or whole) was set to music by the Chicago-based Geter.

Dowell often tells the story of how cotton first entered his artistic sights after a series of dreams. A dozen years ago, his grandmother, gone for decades, began visiting him in his sleep, and at some point he concluded that what she wanted was for him to travel to the cotton fields of the South, where his ancestors had likely been enslaved.

He did, and he has now taken nearly 20,000 images of cotton.

The poems commissioned by Lyric Fest speak of how “the cotton remembers whose land and whose relatives weep” (Marc Bamuthi Joseph); the “whiteness of cotton that makes itself into tons of woe and suffering, scars traveling into future lives to black children ” (Afaa Michael Weaver); and the assurance that despite the struggle, “You’ll water your seeds in Freedom’s field” (Charlotte Blake Alston).

Geter spoke to the poets before setting the texts, and the music he came up with has “an open American art-song sound,” says DuPlantis. “It has an unabashed use of melody. Lots of very poignant music. Some of these poems change on a dime, they go from very bright imagery to something dark.”

In every song, Ward says, there is some recognizable melody: “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Auld Lang Syne.”

The musical treatment of these songs can add a layer of meaning. The melody from “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” comes with “these really awful crunchy chords,” says pianist Ward, who performs the song cycle with Graves and Austin, suggesting that it wasn’t a “sweet land of liberty” for everyone, or perhaps intimating an 1843 abolitionist version of the patriotic tune.

Each song will be preceded by a video of the poet reciting the poem about to be heard in its musical setting; these videos incorporate special visual elements, such as a backdrop of images selected from Dowell’s complete work on cotton.

And so the final experience is a multitude of artistic contributions: the root photography, poets reading their work, the video treatment, the layer of meaning the composer brings, and the added twists of emotion and insight of the singers and pianist.

The entire multimedia presentation promises to pack a punch.

Says Ward: “It hits your soul from all directions.”

It had a particular effect on Dowell, who heard the song cycle for the first time in rehearsals this week.

“I cried. It’s very emotional. And I said, ‘Grandmom, are you happy now?’”

“Cotton” premieres Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, 19 S. 38th St. in West Philadelphia. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. lyricfest.org, 215-438-1702.