Scrip(t) Scraps, part 1

Scrip(t) Scraps, explores—in both print medium and copper sculpture—the performative and subjective nature of punctuation.  For over two decades, my work has investigated how visual language can be used to evoke and depict the “space between silence and sound” as well as the inevitable dissonance between what we encode (visual, verbal, oral communication) and what is decoded by recipients of our communications. 

My collaged materials, symbols, use of shadow and scale shifts, perform these concepts.  Scrip(t) Scraps aims to embody the ever-changing nature of language, particularly how punctuation can so radically alter how we interpret meaning.  For instance, the stuffed Question Mark explodes its shredded, printed contents, pushing them out of its porous mesh, to leave remnants that invite varied and subjective responses.  The etched and inked copper parentheses— on hinges that open and close—perform how these symbols are used in written text to denote that information can move inside and out.  Throughout the installation, I hang cut intaglio and relief prints to produce shadows: visual equivalents for the lingering echoes we often have when we receive language.  I repeat the phrases “What YOU Already KNOW” and “What WE Already KNEW to dramatize how the slight change in tense as well as the insertion of punctuation in different places alters rhythm and meaning.  For over two decades player piano scrolls have been both the inspiration and basis for my visual inquiries into how we perceive oral and written language.  The digital-like holes in the scrolls—the absence—indicate the presence of sound.  Consequently, they are a near-perfect material metaphor for my visualization of the space where dissonance and subjectivity are manifest.