About the artist: Colleen Thornton

Colleen Thornton began taking photographs at the age of nine, the result of a Christmas gift of a black & white Polaroid camera. Her first image that day was a stark shot of the tree tops on her front lawn.

Polaroid's unique photographic product reached its ultimate realization with the SX-70 camera and film. Thornton graduated to that instrument and, over a twenty-year period, used her SX-70 camera to photograph the places she lived and visited. In 1996, almost all of her original Polaroids were lost in the UK.

Fortunately, the shock of this loss was tempered by the knowledge that there existed a set of 38 large-format transparencies of the best of her Polaroid photographs. This difficult experience inspired her to collaborate with poets on the creation of a series of artist's books — a way to give new life to what would have been an irretrievable loss. The first collaboration with the artist's beloved cousin/poet, Kevin Keenan, of Williamstown, MA, appears here. The books are published by Visible Talent, Copenhagen. An ongoing collaboration with Danish poet Kenneth Krabat is currently in production. Contact: colleenthornton at mac.com.

About the writer: Kevin Keenan

Kevin Keenan, 55, attended Penn State and Pace universities. For a time thereafter he worked as an actor in New York, but has spent most of his adult life working in the music business, first with a record label for many years and then as the organizer of a hard rock/heavy metal convention and festival in Los Angeles, from which he retired abruptly in 1996 when a debilitating stroke left him unable to work.

Not long thereafter his cousin, Miss Thornton, approached him with the request that he try to provide "some sort of text" for a collection of her photographs that was about to be published. He asked to see the photos and says he thought them "quite lovely, with a certain still, tranquil quality that suggested the form of the haiku." The two collaborated almost entirely by email for several years (as Thornton was living in Scandanavia at the time and Keenan in the U.S.), with Keenan composing and emailing verses and leaving all other arrangements to his cousin. Keenan is unmarried and currently resides in New England with his cat Heffalump. (Written by Kevin Keenan, January 2007.)

In Memoriam: Kevin Keenan (October 2, 1951 - March 4, 2007)

It is our sad duty to inform you that Kevin passed away in his sleep on March 4th, 2007, in his home in Williamstown, Massachussetts.

Kevin is at peace now, freed from the trap his body had become. His spirit never dimmed, his humor never flagged. Honor his memory in a fashion that befits his life; raise a glass of good wine, plant a tree in the woods, leave a Halloween pumpkin out to feed the creatures, puncture a bloated ego as the need arises. It's hard not to become maudlin at his loss, but remember that Kevin was a master of the "honest sentiment." Carry on this tradition. It is his gift to all of us.

His ashes were spread in the forest behind his house with berries, birdseed, apples and wildflowers so the animals could have a "winter feast." It's what he wanted. Where else do the souls of poets rest but in the shade of the leafy bower?