Logophilia - 2003-2006

Logophobia / Logophilia
Digital prints on canvas and paper, 46" x 32" to 18" x 22", 2003 - 2006.

These images explore language’s limitations and the merits and frustrations of these limitations. They are printed onto canvas, which is cut along the edges (hence the irregular border). They are then T-pinned to the wall, evoking both skin and paper.

Verbal and textual narrative inspires images in the mind’s eye. Images on their own can also inspire the linguistic. But in both text and image there are moments of ambiguity, there are hazy reservoirs of ideas and ideals that both inform and confound. The phrase “I love you” will always mean something different between the writer/speaker and the reader/listener. Ultimately “love” is such a abstract, highly personalized idea and experience that the writer/speaker, freed of the secrecy of love to the other, is simultaneously defeated, realizing that the words themselves are powerless to emote the urgency they are designed to compel. “I love you” is a brimming fire in the chest, but turns to ashes on the tongue, and what escapes the lips floats into the room without a goal, without enough substance to keep it from drifting mildly to the ceiling. Likewise images, which evoke subtleties perhaps better than words, often lack critical precision. But this lack of precision can remedy the difficulties of texts’ seeming immobility. I am interesting in these convolutions and complexities, because I hope to find quiet patterns which will reassure me that the works’ subject are not so angst-inspiring after all.

These images are roughly 42" x 36" archival prints on canvas and cut to the irregular edges, pointed to the wall with T-pins. Another edition is printed 18" x 22" on paper and framed.