Artist Name: Elizabeth Frank

Elizabeth Frank has always loved color and self-expression, but it took her a long time to call herself an artist and a poet. Throughout her 20+ years in medical publishing, writing poetry and making art kept poking up along the edges of her life like wildflowers. She finally left her job 2 years ago and now pours her heart and energy into creating mixed media collage and poetry.

Elizabeth’s mixed media work explores transformation, emotion, and the beauty of inhabiting one’s own power. Using hand-painted paper, she creates art that moves between the representational and the abstract, often bringing together images and words in conversation. Her poems and visual poems have been published in a number of literary journals, including Harpy Hybrid Review, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Thimble Literary Journal, and she is currently working on two chapbooks.

The name “Glint into Fire” comes from the last line of one of her poems, “Just Getting Started”. The poem speaks to the experience of how hard it can be to create something new. When you come across a work of art (or a new social movement, or a new endeavor…), it’s easy to assume that it came effortlessly and that the creators have always been overflowing with confidence. But creating often involves pushing through many obstacles and great resistance, whether internal (self-doubt, fear of messing up…) or external (others’ expectations, the demands of life…). The poem ends by describing what she has experienced: that in order to create, you need both strength and softness, both gentleness and courage. It’s a mixture of a prayer and a hope and a belief, and it’s a blessing she offers for you: “knowing we hold the power / to become a flame, our voices / strong and soft enough / to sing this glint into fire.”

Western Avenue Studios

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Glint into Fire

Glint into Fire

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