An investigation of identity as prompted by art and artists. In AutoPortrait (as flotsam), Kirsten Kaschock uses the words, lives, and images of other artists as springboards into the self. Arranged almost as a gallery walk, AutoPortrait alternates between masque-like encounters with art and reflective passages engaging memory and desire. Influenced by photographers Francesca Woodman and Cindy Sherman, Kaschock walks a tightrope between vulnerability and artifice—using lines and shapes provided by the many artists referenced here (painters, musicians, and poets) to sketch an impression of a woman artist. The struggle she chronicles is familiar to any storyteller: an effort to piece together minor episodes to create some semblance of a whole. The question is whether such a project can ever be accomplished. Can the fragments gathered on the shore of memory be tied together, brought to life? Other artists, perhaps especially the abstract expressionists, serve her as both guide and glue. The result is an intimate travelogue—the poet’s own narrow road to an interior where she finds a meditative balance between rage and regret, sorrow and joy.
