TEXTWORKS

Above: “Re|Visions #9” (Artemisia Gentileschi), from the Re|Visions project.

a r t i s t   s t a t e m e n t

The flip-side of our collective inclination to demolish is to build — or rebuild, by reassembling fragments in hope of restoring a comforting narrative about the world and we who inhabit it. At best, that story is incomplete; at worst, it’s unreliable with an unknowable end. My visual work aims to examine the impact of the written-printed-published word, while pushing it a step further in order to question what we think we know.

The ‘textworks’ I construct are a paper-based fusion of word and image. While they’re a form of mixed media, using various combinations of ink, photographs, print materials, and a variety of papers, text is the basis for the artwork itself. I believe one medium can be more fully charged when infused with another. Much like setting words to music, setting them to image intensifies the effect of both. Words and story are as integral to each piece as form, colour, and movement. Even the style, size, and colour of a typeface can evoke a mood or image as immediate as the meaning of the words they shape. I want to acknowledge that text can have a visual life beyond the page, beyond the aural. The result isn’t quite ekphrasis (in which a poet creates out of the work of an artist, and one medium attempts to better reveal another) — to my mind, “textwork” better describes the weaving of printed language with a visual interpretation of the ideas conveyed.

Some of my textworks take shape as altered or artist books. Some are single panels of salvaged text, while others are large groupings comprised of multiple individual modules. Some are binary code translations hand-cut from paper then floated between sheets of glass. In each case, I initially break down source material — digitally alter, translate, edit, reprint, hand-tear, crumple, and cut — and then, on paper, canvas, and wood, I reassemble those elements in a new way, by layering, gluing, weaving, and stitching. My most recent project is a large assemblage of multiples, presented as the verso and recto pages of an opened codex-form book. 

The rebuild scrambles and shifts perceptions. It spurs questions by revealing the gaps and inadequacies of a largely man-made history. In this way, rather than blindly accepting as accurate our human text-and-image inheritance, we might see it’s possible to identify its deficiencies and, with luck, to begin repairing them.

s e l e c t e d   e x h i b i t i o n s

2017    Re|Visions* | Station Gallery, Whitby   (View more about this project.)
2017    Durham Reach group exhibition | Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
2015    Secret World juried show | Station Gallery, Whitby
2014    Slice of Life juried show | Station Gallery, Whitby
2014    Oshawa Space Invaders urban art festival | Oshawa
2014    Small Works group show | The Vault, Oshawa
2014    The Sketchbook Project | Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, NY
2013    Mind & Matter juried show | Station Gallery, Whitby
2013    Oshawa Space Invaders urban art festival | Oshawa
2013    The Sketchbook Project | Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, NY
2012    Shift juried show | Station Gallery, Whitby
2012    Reading the Image curated group show | Station Gallery, Whitby
2012    Slipstream* (via PineRidge Arts Council) | Town Hall, Ajax
2012    Book to Art | Blue Heron Studio, Uxbridge
2012    Off the Pages | Station Gallery, Whitby
2011    Slipstream | Visual Arts Centre, Bowmanville
2011     Slipstream* | Aurora Cultural Centre, Aurora
2010    Looking Forward, Looking Back juried exhibition | Station Gallery, Whitby
2010    Fragments of the Missing* | Central Whitby Public Library, Whitby
2010    Drawing for Art exhibition | Station Gallery, Whitby (2010-2017)
2010    Slipstream* | Artspace on the Mezzanine (VAC), Bowmanville
2010    Fragments of the Missing* | OPG Info Centre (via PineRidge Arts Council), Pickering
2009    Curated group show | Artspace on the Mezzanine, VAC, Bowmanville
2008    Fragments of the Missing* | Artspace on the Mezzanine (Visual Arts Centre of Clarington)
(*solo show)

a w a r d s

2017    Awarded Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Grant
2015    First prize, Whitby Station Gallery juried show
2014    Second prize, Whitby Station Gallery juried show
2013    First prize, Whitby Station Gallery juried show
2012    First prize, Book to Art exhibition | Blue Heron Studio

p u b l i c a t i o n s

2017    Re|Visions, Station Gallery
2017    Durham Reach, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
2014    Numéro Cinq magazine
2014    Short Fiction Renaissance anthology, Piquant Press
2011    East of the City magazine
2009    Surfacing arts magazine

 

Save