W R I T and W E F T E D
April 4-June 7, 2026
daphne:art GALLERY AND ADVISORY
by-appointment
Sally Van Doren: paintings and drawings
Nancy Koenigsberg: woven wire sculptures
Poetry Reading in conjunction with the exhibition
Sunday, May 17. Reading at 2 pm.
Gallery open house from 1-5 pm. Daphne:Art in Litchfield, CT RSVP: daphneadeeds@gmail.com
Artist & Poet
There is a moment, in the work of Sally Van Doren, when language ceases to be read and begins to be seen.
Working from her studio in West Cornwall, Connecticut, Van Doren occupies a rare and singular space — one where the disciplines of poet and visual artist are not parallel pursuits but a single, inseparable act. Her drawings emerge from the same wellspring as her verse: many pages of illegible, meditative handwriting, accumulated over decades of daily practice. What begins as a journal becomes a gesture. Script becomes mark. The word dissolves into line, and the line carries the full weight of language.
A recipient of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and the author of four collections published by LSU Press — most recently Sibilance (2023) — Van Doren has long been recognized for verse that poet August Kleinzahler described as having "no dead moments, no fill." The same is true of her visual work. Nothing is decorative. Everything is charged.
-Julie Durkin Marty
Selected Works
Paintings
Drawings
Prints
“Sally Van Doren’s poetry is everywhere alive. There are no dead moments, no fill: Even the conjunctions, prepositions, and assorted connectives carry a charge. The language is alive. The movement of language is alive. The mind at work here is all points quick, full of play and bite.”