Anatomy of an artist statement

Lately I had the supreme good luckto have a poem accepted in the brand-new publication Atmospheric River. It’ll be published with my real name, Skye Alexander (Skye Allen is my fiction pen name). The editors needed an artist statement. I’d never written one of those before.

I found this handy post,“The Artist Statement and Why They Mostly Suck,”at the Bmore Art blog.These instructionswere vastly helpful:

“The essentials of the artist statement are as following:

1. An explanation of the materi...