Text and Visual Language

Artwork and Statements

Brandon Barr

Statement:

The work from my 'Flash Painting' series explores the hidden aspects of online interaction and presentation by highlighting the captions, color pallets and digital devices we use. Fragments from various social media captions I have found online are painted onto digital canvas prints using reflective acrylic. Whether it is scrolling through Instagram or Twitter, the text often implies a personal opinion from that user, but the sections I have taken out can also be interpreted within a much broader context. Captions like '“Conspicuously absent” or “am i enough, am i too much” combines two contrasting ideas and also refers to the way in which many of us interact on social media. We present ourselves to potentially millions of people while physically hiding behind the screens of our devices in solitude. The printed background is also a combination of a digital painting and found photos that have been blurred out.

The work itself also needs to exist in two places. You have to use the camera flash from your phone to view the reflective text. Once this happens, the piece lives on as a physical painting and a flattened digital file, both needing each other in order to complete the artwork.

Website: http://www.brandonhbarr.com

Dan Bina

Statement:

My work explores desire and entertainment associated with social media and e-commerce, and the sweeping changes internet culture has made on visual life through the lens of humor.

Website: http://www.danbina.com

Tyrus Clutter

Statement:

Art in the 21st century is seldom what it appears on the surface. The artist expects that the viewer comes to the work with his or her individual and unique complexities and then peels away the layers of the work to complete its meaning. Much of my work suggests that interaction by offering up imagery or information that can literally be “read’ by the viewer.

As philosopher Jacques Derrida stated, “there is nothing outside of the text.” Even an image presents the expectation that it should be “read” by the viewer, these works employ text AS the image. The layers that create—or complicate—the “image” are mined from the experiences of the artist, but are also met with the parallel multifaceted experiences brought by each viewer.

The sedimentary layers that comprise the histories of both artist and viewer are mirrored in the format of the palimpsest. Traditionally, the palimpsest was a parchment from which the primary layer of text was scraped—leaving a perceptible residue of that text—then covered with a new text layer. Both layers coexist within the same parchment and the history of the entire document is seen through those dueling layers.

These works are similar palimpsests. The images may obscure an under layer of text or may be formed by the multiplying of various layers of text. The fullness of the works, however, cannot be understood without the residue of
layers bubbling up to the surface. These texts, along with other “texts” (i.e. the substrate of vintage clothing or fabrics, or the assemblage objects in certain works) further expand the density of meaning. The “reading”
of the elements of the works, thus, reveals nuanced understanding of the aims of the artist as well as the competing “texts” that make each individual viewer a unique being.

Website: http://www.tyrusclutter.com

Michael Dinges

Statement:

In all of my work I want the viewer to think, 'Is this what we wanted? Are these the results we intended?'

Our current devotion to digital/virtual technology simultaneously connects us while alienating us. By intentionally keeping the user distracted and unsatiated, the user is in a constant state of 'the perpetual now.'

This reminded me of the WW1 soldier suffering from 'Shell Shock' and the uncontrollable shaking that was a signature symptom of this trauma.

I chose the form of the historic folk toy called a Limberjack and Husk Doll as a way to express our contemporary anxiety under an accelerated period of change.

Each of these pieces has a broken smart phone embedded in their torso. Formally, the Limberjack figures are influenced by the destroyed trees of the WW1 battle for 'No Man's Land,' and the Husk Doll is wrapped in monofilament fishing line meant to evoke fiber optic cable as well as its use as a device for capture or harvest.

Website: http://www.michaeldinges.com

Adam Erlbaum

Statement:

I limit materials. Three color values, no mixing. Often only one brush. I work with heavy-duty canvas on heavy-duty stretchers, and a heavy-duty aluminum easel. Although I only work with the canvas clamped to the easel in the traditional manner, I frequently move the canvas between the clamp and the floor. Clamping the painting signals “Paint.” Moving it to the floor signals “Stop Painting.”
I completely erase most canvases multiple times leaving an even wash of an arbitrary color. I make evolving series (plural) of marks. The mark-making becomes affirmative when I am approaching the solution to a given painting. The physical and mental planes align. The painting is a record of this experience.

Tim Hahn

Statement: I like to make things.

Website: Timhahnart.com

Stacy Isenbarger & Jacob Wilson

Statement:

Detached from expected presentations, my work is empowered by cultural associations to materials and iconography. Poetic intersections between these images create dialectical, contextual space for viewers to experience. In the Child-like Wishes collage series, stitched drawings of childhood fortunetellers are layered with other imagery to create this dialog. As viewers perceive their own narratives or relationships to this outside dynamic, they can reflect on their own assumptions through visual realms.

Website: http://www.stacyisenbarger.com

David Janssen

Statement:

Like many of us, I too often find myself lost on the internet. Painting allows me to explore the internet’s isolating potential during my endless scrolling and searching. I am moved by comments and replies that become seemingly irrelevant to the original post. But more than often these are more striking to me than anything I was looking for. I wonder who the person is at the other end and if their words are heartfelt or fabricated by algorithms. There is a familiarity with the format of these paintings and the replies that I have selected for my work that allow for a different connection when separated from their original source and merged to the surface of my paintings. My works are made with found text from social media, irrelevant comments, confessions, and the attempted connections that are typed in these online spaces which are all too often scrolled past and ignored.

Website: http://davidjanssenjr.com

Savannah Jubic

Statement:

My work engages with the concept of magical thinking regarding mental health, anxiety, and repetitive thoughts. Seen frequently throughout religion and fairy tales is the idea that a single person can ward off terrible danger or loss through some great feat of labor or personal sacrifice. Through my practice I engage with my own personal anxieties as if I could grant them this same power in day to day life.

Materiality and process are of the utmost importance as I process intangible concepts. Weaving in itself is a record of the body, recording tensions and thoughts with each throw. Processes such as hand weaving, destruction of woven cloth, repetitive mending and embroidery physically enact the creative, destructive, and repetitive processes of anxiety and depression, embedding difficult emotions into physical object and installations.

Website: http://savannahjubic.com

Edward Kelley

Statement:

My work is rooted in the investigation of labor, identity and class structure, and how they may intersect and present themselves within our social constructs. Using humor as a central vein throughout my work I can create a sense of unease or playfulness while also addressing more somber subject matter.
These text-based works come from a deeply personal memories or experiences. I often allow the technique to obscure some of the writing as a way to keep some personal memories or experiences hidden or to create a sense of erasure or re-birth from other personal memories. When left decipherable, the text gives the composition a unifying thread allowing the viewer to create a narrative or relative understanding of the work.

Website: http://edwardvkelley.com

Harold Lehmann

Statement:

'Snakeheist: A Dollar Store Caper' is a collaborative multimedia, karaoke animated story that currently lives online, but will be deployed in various formats including live performance and projection. The work can be viewed at
SnakeHeist.Net

'a wanabe zelot escapes granma's house & tries to figure out which voices to listen to'

words by Harold Lehmann, New York City
music by David Whitely, Portland OR
sound production by Brandt Gassman, New York City
karaoke animation by David Whitely, Portland OR
puppet animation by Lake Simons, Fort Worth, TX

artist statment from writer/ creator Harold:

this project is a part of an ongoing collaboration and inquiry into how processes of voice, text and meaning may be evolving in our hyper digitized and mediated landscape. i began to write the story of wanabe and his granma around february 2020.

as a storyteller and mental health worker, i am fascinated by the 'voices' in our landscape and how we respond; 'hearing voices' is a term usually reserved for someone who is either ill or exalted; the truth is we are all constantly hearing and responding to voices; what does this mean for our actions and relationships in this time?

as i completed the text, the world was changed by covid-19 and new realities of socialization and connection. David, Brandt and i worked to integrate the text with David's remarkable sound design and Brandt's keen production. we were lucky to recruit 10 performers from across the globe, record the chapters mostly by phone and begin a unique editing and design process.

as we discussed best way to present, David developed a format with intuitive use of a glitched karaoke program and collage to animate and enhance the themes.

featuring voices from across the globe:
✵ Theresa Bucheister
✵ Kym Bernazky
✵ Lyana Fernandez
✵ Nick Jumara
✵ Harold Lehmann
✵ Richard Lehmann
✵ Sylvie Meltzer,
✵ John Moore,
✵ Brett Scieszka
✵ Kyle Triplett
✵ Tina West

Website: http://www.snakeheist.net

Christopher Leitch

Statement:

I am a mature artist and my work seems always to arrive at a new beginning. I strive in a vocabulary of not-knowing and acceptance of non-attainment. Meaning, maybe, that I can quickly exhaust what I think I know and then must follow another path. Like many artists, I am seeking: a new way, idea, result, some kind of realization. I won’t say we are always failing, yet our efforts are perpetual. 

When we realize that everything is a part of emptiness, we can recognize what we see as just a tentative form and color. My work dwells in the spaces between perception and communication and understanding… it embraces inefficiencies of description conveyed through layers of image. I turn to shapes of words, and their fragments and single letters, to draw attention to the wholeness we actually are. 

These drawings take as their subject Buddhist ideas and teachings, such as the six paramitas, or wisdoms, of zazen. It is said that we may participate in society without being tainted, by enacting them. Such a realization does not control fear, unease or distrust of the physical world. Rather, these are gestures of maintaining composure midst the infinite flotsam of our struggles with desire and attachment that litter social life.
   

By working with purposefully clumsy methods and materials chosen by chance, I don’t always know what anything’s going to look like. This is liberating and invigorating.

Website: http://christopherleitchstudio.net

Hayden Maltese

Statement:

Hayden Maltese is a mixed media artist currently residing in Chicago Illinois. He graduated from Alfred University this past summer with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, primarily focused on painting and printmaking.

Website: http://loveangermoney.com

Peter Manion

Statement:

This collection of work was born from a paradoxical condition; the silence that swallowed the world after the pandemic hit, and an unexpected conversation that could only exist in that solitude. My process for this project was meditative; through it, I could examine the state of my relationships and position within my social landscape. I was able to observe where I was supported, undermined, encouraged, and interrogated?all while removed from the physical spaces that those experiences existed in.

Though many artists dream of unlimited space, time, and seclusion to create their works, the significance of those elements becomes nuanced when they?re the only thing that you have access to (as opposed to them comprising a frequently unattainable, deeply desired condition). It was profound that such a loud conversation emerged internally when my surroundings were stripped of their usual activity, noise, and motion. In this indefinitely lasting solitude, I could hear what was once muted to me while I was directly participating in it. My artwork is both a memorial of this unique, formative time and a foundation for an ongoing creative process. The text, and the methods which produced it, captures an experience while also acting as a vehicle for new projects/themes to assume form.

Kim Morski

Statement:

In my current work, I focus on the dehumanizing effects of technology and the ways data-obsessed reliance on digital devices erodes trust in intuition. Text describing real and imagined technology is screenprinted on handmade objects. I use analog processes like screenprinting and sewing to emphasize a handmade aesthetic, at the cost of efficiency and perfection. These “smart devices” boast capabilities to acquire real-time data, share information, and monitor human activity, but notably missing from these matter-of-fact claims is an appreciation for knowing oneself or another through attentive, personal connection. As we humans adapt ourselves for technology without restraint, I uncomfortably acknowledge the normalization of digital connectivity in place of mindful, physical presence and ask what is forfeited in the exchange.

Website: http://www.kimmorski.com

Mark Allen Natale

Statement:

I have a deep appreciation for objects and places that evoke a sense of nostalgia. Antique items, roadside signage and historic architecture are common themes in my work. I feel compelled to document these relics in detailed oil paintings, bringing a renewed attention to their existence. Consider these paintings “formal portraits” intended to elicit a sense of reverence and respect for what the subjects represent: a time when common, everyday things were created with both beautiful form and lasting function. 

The inspiration that guides my approach to painting is the traditional, realist works by the Dutch Masters and early American illustrators. A key element to my compositions is a strong contrast of light and shadow. To achieve the dramatic realism of my paintings, thin layers of oil paint are applied to a smooth surface of linen canvas or prepared wood panel. Careful time is spent mixing colors to get a perfectly clear hue and raw colors straight from the tube are seldom used. My finished works are striking images with remarkable detail that have a sense of focus and solitude.

Website: http://www.marknatale.com

Tom Rosenthal

Statement:

Though I’ve had formal training in advertising art and graphic design (Pratt Institute BFA Graphic Design), I have never worked steadily in that field. I was never attracted to the sales aspect of the discipline, but rather, I was fascinated by the formal, compositional aspects. Especially the use of typography, words as images.
Over the years, though I have worked in various fields, (most recently home renovation), I’ve continued to make (and sometimes show/sell) visual art rooted in graphic design and typography/text manipulation.

Words and letterforms make very effective art building blocks because of two main attributes:
1. Their formal qualities, the way they divide space, create dynamic negative space. Letterforms have intrinsic balance of positive/negative space and effective typographic design uses this to its fullest.
2. Communication, clarity of statement. There are few faster ways to make a statement or express a point than simply spelling it out.
For these reasons I have always been inspired by and felt a kinship to Robert Indiana. Although there is little variation in his typographic choices (mostly stencil derived lettering similar to the Clarendon typeface), he was a pioneer in the use of letterforms, advertising and graphic design principles to make fine art.
When I began to learn Chinese, (working with Chinese immigrant labor in the construction and carpentry fields) I was very excited to be able to add a whole new arsenal of design elements to my work, Chinese characters.

The ideographic nature of written Chinese can make for fast communication of simple ideas as a single character, rather than being merely a sound component, is a complete abstract concept. Chinese characters also have their own balance and variation of positive and negative space.
Robert Indiana made work that used Chinese characters late in his career but little where they interacted directly with western characters, rather they were either on their own, or with English captions.
Some of my most recent work explores what happens when both writing systems are used simultaneously, interactively as design elements.
This is partly inspired by fifteen years of working with Chinese immigrants and learning Chinese language.

Instagram: @tom_rosenthal13

Blake Sanders

Statement:

The slow march of cultural progress shares much in common with the evolution of primitive and prehistoric creatures. My work discusses antiquated attitudes ranging from primeval notions of gender roles and romance to the reluctant move from harmful technologies like our fossil fuel dependence. Dinosaurs act as human surrogates in my work to parallel their ancient, and our still archaic, habits while tracing a behavioral lineage between all creatures. My practice is influenced by the “fossil record” evident in my own artistic development. I also look to print predecessors to gain an understanding of the adaptations in printmaking’s collective evolution.

Website: http://orangebarrelindustries.com/blake

Alan Serna

Statement:

My practice utilizes a range of processes, including traditional printmaking, mass-produced ephemera, and digital mapping to chronicle my family’s personal and political immigrant narratives. I utilize views shaped by my bi-national upbringing to create a visual language that allows me to process and depict my experiences growing up in the United States and Mexico. I chronicle my family’s personal and political immigrant narratives through the deconstruction and re-composing of photos from family archives, smart phone photographs and screenshots. Through my practice I touch on personal aspects of my upbringing, my relationship to labor, and simultaneous feelings of nostalgia and displacement.

Website: http://www.alanserna.com

Jody Servon

Statement:

Saved: Objects of the Dead, a collaborative project by Jody Servon, artist, and Lorene Delany-Ullman, author. The project is comprised of 43 photographs of material possessions people have saved after the death of a loved one. Each image is paired with a prose poem that is based on interviews with the people who have kept each item. Our project is an exploration of the human experience of life, death, and memory. Saved chronicles the lives, deaths, and relationships of individuals whose objects are imbued with their emotional and physical senses, then kept as an affirmation of their lives. 

This project is a collaborative work not only between the artist and author, but also those who participate by lending their objects of the dead to be photographed and tell us their intimate, provocative, and sometimes embarrassing stories about themselves and their departed loved ones. We then preserve the legacy of the dead in both word and image, a photographic and lyric expression of the indelible imprint they have left behind. 

Saved represents a communal and outward expression of grief and loss. The universality of how objects, mementoes, and heirlooms embody the otherwise abstract emotions of loss and memory. This collection is a mixture of object, ethnography, and language combined with a sense of personal intimacy addressing human mortality. 

Website: http://www.jodyservon.com

Travis Shaffer

Statement:

White Work is an exercise in opacity.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Remarks on Color, a targeted response to Goethe?s Theory of Color, was published after the death of its author, Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1951. Despite its title, this work reveals itself not be primarily concerned with color, but rather it proves a consideration of language?s inability to accurately account for color as material phenomena. Much of the body of the text concerns itself with the complexities of articulating the character of the color white. White work is a project born out of stretching Wittgenstein?s recognition of the failures of language to produce certainty of explanation.

White work is an ongoing collection of works produced through acts of creation, destruction, omission, and appropriation of both image and text made in response to a central questions posed by Wittgenstein in Remarks on Color: ?...what is the meaning of this expression, what is the logic of this concept [white]?

Website: http://www.travisshaffer.com

Paul Shortt

Statement:

Over the last five years I’ve been exploring the language of street signs focusing on texts that deny and warn against an action. After appropriating the text I mimic the reflectiveness of the street signs through bright colors, line, dot and geometric patterns.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I’ve been drawn to language that alerts you to an emergency, or that addresses time. A key aspect of the pandemic for me has been how time has functioned differently, with the typical American 9-5 work week ground to a halt. These works, while about emergency and time, are open-ended enough for viewers to assign and attach their own meanings to the work.

Website: http://paulshortt.com

Amrita Singhal

Statement:

I’m a painter and printmaker based in Berkeley, Ca. I spent my childhood years in India and the essence of my sensibility is infused with the exuberant influences of color, textiles, and architecture. I’m also obsessed with art history and the materials and techniques used by artists through the ages. I am primarily a self taught painter and have learned my craft through experimentation with painting and printmaking techniques. The concrete, physical and low tech nature of painting is completely right for me. Many of my paintings are inspired by music, literature and poetry in Hindi, Urdu and English.

Website: www.instagram.com/amritasinghalstudio/

Victoria Smits

Statement:

My practice, as it navigates the strictures of my past, begins in my heritage, at the confluence of order and creativity. It is a researching and processing of agency and how internalized beliefs about self, identity, and empowerment are carried from parent to child. My material dichotomy is an exploration of sculpture, text and image, time-based media, and data visualization where science and cheesecloth hold hands, where the abstraction of the natural environment intersects with the maternal, where a womxn can be an artist, mother, and human in one day.

My current research goals stem from explorations during the pandemic and my changing role parenting my youngest child. In the article “Gendered Spaces,” Alexia Bumbaris references gendered space as ?relational space [that] emerges through connections between various objects, people, concepts, rules and places? (2019). My practice inhabits these relational spaces and responds to it. I pursue the complexity of motherhood with the notion of a “grander” female vision through media in the form of mundane objects or acts, circumstantial in my role as mother: dryer lint, laundry sheets, fabric scraps, pieces of my son’s drawings, discarded and decades-old home-keeping journals, stains and dyes extracted from kitchen spices and garden leaves.

I intend for detritus to become new, for light to reveal singularity, and for place to inform oneness; I intend to manifest a new feminist geography.

Website: http://victorialsmits.com

Christopher Taylor

Statement:

Conceptually it is easy to understand my work as the drawing is the writing and the writing is the drawing. I am interested in language as a writing idea and as a visual drawn idea. The way a drawing or painting can sound when reading it as language and as visual language together. More important is the tone of the conversation and sharing my ideas of seeing the world through the lens of fatherhood. Historically and culturally men did not share or do not share the joys and struggles of taking care of or raising children. Including what men historically choose to represent in art. My drawing looks to a different sensibility of value in a conversation through drawing and painting. 

The submitted work represents a shift presently occurring, taking on a more lyrical, “musical” aspect. I am sublimating ideas of songwriting as drawing. My writing and drawing increasingly has been arriving to me through song. I will be walking and humming “lyrics” and envisaging the recording process as drawing these ideas as songs. Opening new avenues of engagement; expanding my conceptual understanding using a lyrical tone and aphoristic thinking to delve into philosophical ideas without being too word surface direct. Like a circling or singing of a truth.

Website: http://www.christopherkanetaylor.com

Chris Thorson

Statement:

My work navigates daily life and the forces of consumerism and American culture. Drawing upon conventions of trompe l'oeil and the readymade, I use a range of materials and methods to remake ordinary objects such as plastic bags, lost gloves, and dirty socks. The resulting sculptures articulate banal aspects of modern life, positing dissonance between perception and reality in an effort to question what we overlook and what we esteem.

Website:http://christhorsonstudio.com

Anthony Warnick

Statement:

A cube of marble, a pillow, a pile of books, a ream of white tabloid bond paper, and canvas drop cloth, seemingly disparate items assembled to point the viewer towards the overlapping systems we live within. I assemble my works from stacks of language, history, and materials. The work’s media (mediums) vary from project to project, based upon the conceptual aims. The thread that ties my work together rests on how I approach the world around me. I comprehend the world through systems, and through deconstructing these systems to their core components, their functions emerge. Thematically, over the last five years, the works concentrated primarily around two pivotal social systems - the for-profit prison industry and the news media.

The forms are borrowed, treating art history as a database, retrieving and restoring for future creation. Art is a cultural process of remixing and sharing to produce new works. This intentional remaking highlights the collaborative production of culture. Through borrowing forms, the context becomes the primary focus of the work.

Meaning exists as constellations. The interplay between objects is central to my installation practice. For example, The Transmutation Of Flesh To Gold and And Counting in association reinforce the scale and rhythm of the accumulation of wealth by the Correction Corporation of America, and each sits in the shadow of the towering presence of the dreams of those incarcerated in Infinite Sleep. The vinyl pillows, from Unnatural Deeds Do Breed Unnatural Troubles and Infinite Sleep, were manufactured by those incarcerated at Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio. This exploitation resulted from a systemic history of forced labor in which those incarcerated toils for the state and corporations. Knowing this history transforms the object, imbuing (charging) it with the power to serve as a conduit connecting our humanity that another’s.

While its symbolic form occasionally appears within my work, language structures my approach to the world. In the studio, I play with words as often as objects, and through combination and combustion, a poetics emerges. Bad News Travels Fast exemplifies this process and language’s material presence in my work. This web-based work quickly reads the current top story from the New York Times homepage, continually refreshing upon completing each article. While the background and foreground showily slide back and forth. Language begins to abstract as it flies past with our minds catching recognized words giving them the feeling of hanging in space for a moment. Yet even these words are pushed aside as the news pushes past at hundreds of words per minute.

As one pulls on the threads of these systems, trying to untangle the knots, one quickly realizes the interconnected misery and the ways that history rhymes. Metaphors lead us to reconsider the typical flow of each system. A piece of marble expropriated from the Parthenon of the Athenian Acropolis or a vinyl pillow produced by those incarcerated, through placing things in a constellation of connections, an image of reality comes into focus, letting us candidly see the world.

Website: http://anthonywarnick.com

Aaron Wilder

Statement:

Aaron Wilder is an interdisciplinary artist who blurs boundaries between the analog and the digital, the public and the private, and the unassuming and the instigative. He uses his own experiences and sense of identity as a lens through which he explores the introspective and social processes of contemporary culture. Through an analytical deconstruction of these processes, his artistic approach is akin to that of an anthropologist, sociologist, and psychologist combined. Wilders concept-driven projects all incorporate his core belief that art can and should be used as a tool for generating critical thinking, dialogue, knowledge sharing, and understanding between individuals with divergent world perspectives.

Website: http://aaronwilder.com/

Saul Zalesch

Statement:

I began making collage while teaching art history at Louisiana Tech University. These paralleled collages my students made in art appreciation classes. All the while I assembled collections of early 20th-century artistic ephemera. Since retiring from teaching I have made collage my chief avocation. I use collage to comment on many aspects of history and contemporary culture.