The Felt Square

The felt square is a difficult plane on which to collage. When the artist uses liquid glue, bumps form like poison ivy boils under filaments of magazine paper; a glue stick either rips or fails. The texture challenges: It is childlike. Even in abstraction, the felt square conjures handmade doll, handmade horse, craft store, nursery school project. In a row, resonant on their own — teal pool, purple of heavy rain cloud, jonquil, burnt orange like matchstick-box edge — the squares become a flat color lesson. But success lies in subtlety: when hidden and revealed to form new shapes, the squares have poise. Sharpness that draws but does not distract. The felt is useful and bright. Sensed from across the room, it strikes.

Rachel Cloud Adams is a writer and visual artist living in Baltimore. She is the founder/editor of the journals Lines + Stars and GROUND and the editor at a child welfare-focused advocacy association. Her poems, fiction, and artwork have appeared or are forthcoming in The North American Review, The Hopkins Review, Hobart, Quail Bell, Big Muddy, Salamander, Cagibi, The Conium Review, Carousel, Memoir, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of three poetry chapbooks: What is Heard (Red Bird Press, 2013), Sleeper (Flutter Press, 2015), and Space and Road (Semiperfect Press, 2019). She received her MA in writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Find out more at www.rachelcloudadams.com.