![Painting of little girl standing with a sheep in the front yard of an old house with two adults sitting in chairs behind her in the yard](/sites/default/files/2023-10/Elmer%20WIP%20SLideshow%20copy.jpg)
SCMA Congratulates Tryon Prize Winners Lola Anaya '24 and Yasmine Porath '24
Every year, the Smith College Museum of Art awards the Tryon Prize in Art and Writing. These prizes recognize the work of current Smith College students in installation, performance, video, sound, digital, internet and interactive art or writing related to a work at the museum.
This year, the first place Tyron Prize for Art went to Yasmine Porath '24 for Embryosmic, an interactive installation that, in the artist’s words, explores “themes of the body through portals involving a mix of organic materials such as SCOBY, bioplastic, blood, walnut shells, and hair, as well as recycled textiles, takeout containers, and tea bag wrappers joined together by light.” Check out a video of the piece here.
Second place: Amiel Williams '24
Honorable mentions: Aubrey Banie '27 and Gabrielle Coello '24
The Tryon Prize for Writing went to Lola Anaya '24 for their poems in response to Edwin Romanzo Elmer's Mourning Picture, which is currently on view on the third floor. You can read Lola’s poems below.
Second place: Ciana Socias '25
Honorable mention: Margaret (M.J.) Schwartz '24
Containment
I found myself stuck with the bugs between the blades of grass
A mite dares to climb up, not knowing there is nothing
Waiting for it in some higher place
I stared blankly toward the lilac bush yet to bloom,
The white sheep beckoning,
The containment of objects to a frame,
The gray street;
Nothing that mattered.
I couldn’t imagine the inside of the house,
Not without the suffocation
Of boxes
And the smell of old books,
Unopened food,
Stacks of photographs,
Unsealed grief—
A brief candle
Her building was sold off and torn down
A month after her passing.
I went home and stared at
The containment of rubble on her corner
It was already gone.
I went home and it was too late.
I would always be in this state of unmoving
Staring at the gilded frame,
Signifying nothing.
Her Best
The house sat brick upon brick
With this sickly green exterior
Frazzled by the landscape it doesn’t fit into
Shutters opened for the flowers
At the window sill accompanied by a note
Of condolence
The girl stands outside in a wooly dress
Wrong for the weather, but
It’s how her parents remember her best—
In the grass with her toys
Hat tossed to the side with the doll stroller
That scenery
Grassy and humid
Wooly and brick
Pantoum to Carry On
There once was a closet inside the bedroom
Where my father slept when he lived with his grandmother
And my sister and I would later play pretend
Among the stacks of papers and boxes
My father used to sleep at his grandmother’s house
Inside this room before he moved in with my mother
Among the stacks of papers and boxes—
These things that he would insist on keeping
This home with my mother
Was two blocks away from this closet-room
These things that he would insist on keeping
Only grew harder to contain in both spaces
To walk two blocks away from this home
Was a ritual my sister and I would do each weekend
As we became harder to contain in one space
And we found new treasures to play with
Each weekend, in this closet my sister and I
Would play in boxes of my father’s memories
And we found new treasures to play with—
Rotary phones and cassette tapes and other antiques
My father would continue to keep these memories in boxes
But once the building with the closet was knocked down
The antiques were shoved into the garage
There once was a closet inside the bedroom
And once the building with the closet was knocked down,
All that remained were jagged memories of care
There once was a closet inside the bedroom
And there once was a grandmother, now there are more boxes
Mourning Picture
Found poem after Adrienne Rich
What I Mean When I Say I’ve Moved On
It is simply offering words
Conjured through nights of unrest
That a dead relative may or may not
Have said in moments of ghastly heat
It is simply walking away from home
Led forth by the purity of youthful cares
Or astray with desires of growing pains
Whichever fits better into the picture
It is growing tired of asking and giving
And scaffolding other people’s dreams;
It is loaning myself out, never to be remembered
Tending to every lilac leaf and sprouting tree
It is simply sitting in a field beneath crackled clouds
Removing my ruby-ribboned hat, tweezing
Blades of grass with my fingers one by one, saying
I forgive you
I forgive you
I forgive you