Rain Pillow

In the late 1980s Steir began a series of paintings of waterfalls, in which poured and dripped streams of paint simulated the physical action of falling water at the same time that they created an image of falling water. This unity of the method of creation with the subject represented has carried over into Steir's work in other media. In 1998 Steir and the poet and critic John Yau went to Graphicstudio with the stated purpose of producing works through a "heightened collaborative method." Rain Pillow, the first effort in their project of merging image and text, was produced from three plates. The first plate laid the flat red background. Steir then brushed and spattered a second plate with gold pigment. Finally, on a third plate, Yau rubber-stamped the text of his poem in yellow:

Rain fills the pillow
falling falling and falling
onto the page
upright oblong cloud
on which your shadow is writing
ARCHIVE OF TRANSMIGRATIONS
DOOR OR WINDOW MELTING
UNOPENED MIRROR
ARMS AND LEGS OF A WHEEL
The tears gathering in your eyes are all
that's left

As in Steir's waterfall paintings, the poem's metaphors of rain and tears, of pillow and page, evoke the process of making the print, with Steir's flecks and drops of gold applied in the manner of falling rain.