Brookhart Jonquil received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his BFA as well as a BA in Art History from the University of Arizona. He was born in Santa Cruz, California and currently lives in Miami.
Jonquil elected to answer the interview questions in the form of poems.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
By its light alone the candle is known to the eye,
but the candle was not made to be seen.
By that same light, a road at night becomes legible
and my eye, forgetting the candle
drinks the road as I walk
How did your interest in art begin?
Little atoms, buzzing in circles
make themselves little atoms
and from the cycle becomes the stuff.
All deeds repeat-
some vibrating in a trompe l’oeil of persistence
Some only every thousand years.
The young tree is overjoyed
in discovering for itself
the same straight path upward
that the forest has always followed
How has living in Miami affected your art practice?
An iguana,
having waited all year for the mangos to ripen
bites into each one
and through magic or metabolism
the fruits become the iguana
and the iguana
shits from the tree
into the river
Tell us about your work process and how it develops.
The moment there was something
the emptiness knew its naked difference
and the weight of it all
came crushing down
as dense as an object
What past trends in art do you think should never come back?
A distant echo
guides you where to stand
and there, in death
your hill of bones
shifts the landscape
and the echo shifts too
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work?
so vast is the space between objects
and so thick the time,
that against all probability
blind stones call to each other
by gravity’s tug
that they might share the kiss of collision
