The Vilbil Blog
When Gestures Become Poetry
For artist Miggs Burroughs, it was a quiet but daring one:
Can compassion be seen — not just felt?
Fascinated by the rhythm and beauty of American Sign Language (ASL), Miggs studied each gesture frame by frame, discovering a kind of poetry hidden in motion itself.
He paired this visual rhythm with Emily Dickinson’s verse:
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain…”
Thirty people — of different ages, backgrounds, and abilities — each signed a single word or phrase from the poem.
Using lenticular photography, Miggs captured two distinct gestures of every sign and merged them into moving portraits that shift as the viewer walks by.
Each image reveals compassion unfolding — gesture by gesture, word by word.
To complete this vision, artist and inventor Mark Yurkiw created the Mantra Wheel — a sculptural companion to the photographs.
On two identical, rotating cylinders, he embossed Dickinson’s poem in Braille, allowing visitors to read and feel the same message through touch.
Together, the lenticular portraits and Braille sculpture formed a dialogue between sight and sensation — the visual and the tactile, the seen and the felt.
As Miggs said at the opening:
“This is not an art exhibit. It’s a poetry exhibit — expressed through the hands of our community.”
What began in a small Connecticut library soon grew into a message the world could finally see— and touch.
Photo of the Westport Library installation, 2017 — Courtesy of Miggs Burroughs and Mark Yurkiw, “Signs of Compassion.”
