marlene mountain
books
biography
2000

other rens book two & book three [one volume] 2000

Marlene Mountain is an artist and poet from Hampton, Tennessee. She obtained
her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the University of Oklahoma Norman,
and her Master of Arts in painting at the University of North Dakota, where
she also taught drawing and design courses. Her travels, the influence of
which is evident in her work, include four months in Japan, as well as
travels to France, Aruba, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Her work has
been exhibited in New York City at the IBM Gallery of Science and Art and at
New York University's Grey Art Gallery, and her poetry and visuals have been
published in Poland, South America, Britain, Japan, Canada and the United
States. She was recently named one of the 25 Outstanding Poets of Global
Haiku, and has been called 'the woman who reinvented haiku' because she
introduced topical feminist and environmental issues into haiku and related
poetic forms, and began to arrange the words into visual formats in the early
seventies.

Mountain's work has evolved from two-dimensional design and minimalism in
paintings, photography and short, non-haiku poems created in the sixties, to
explorations of haiku and painting. These forms, she says, are intrinsically
bound. The majority of her works has been created in series. Since 1979, says
Mountain, 'I've written my paintings and painted my writings.' A recent
retrospective exhibition at Hayes MacMillan Art included works from her
visual and word series created in the seventies, eighties and nineties.

For more than twenty years Mountain has been a major influence in the regional experience with what she calls the shevolution. She was one of the
original participants of Hard to Find, the volunteer regional art advocacy
group, and has also exhibited numerous times at Appalachian State University.

Megan Hayes
Spring 2000

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