For the last decade, I’ve focused on using text as image in my mixed media work – it has proven to be the perfect merger of my main creative practices (drawing and writing poetry) after many years of compartmentalizing those pursuits. Incorporating text into my visual art practice has liberated it, paving the way for working with abstract imagery and also expanding the use of intuitive and chance-based methods in my process. Mingling methods and approaches in my practice has also established some basic themes I explore in the work itself. Text is generally used to represent ideas, and we are meant to ignore the shapes of letters on the page as they communicate those ideas. “A reader must be able to internalize an alphabet and effectively look ‘through’ the characters to the meanings they convey. For example, when reading a book, one is often not aware of looking at marks of ink on paper. One is much more aware of the ideas that live under the surface of the words.” (poets.org) Through repeating, crossing, and densely layering words, I remove the viewer’s ability to read the text’s messages directly and force them to engage with the shapes of letters and the new shapes created through overlapping letterforms. The ideas of the words are still present under (or in?) the surface, and their meanings are also joined together, making new ideas. These overlaps of text make textures (sometimes like wallpaper patterns or woven fabric/plaid), make unintended images (like finding pictures in clouds or entangled tree branches), and make tiny openings (spiracles) where something else can enter the work, something unknown and unpredictable—an animating spirit, the viewer’s response…

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A ”spiracle” is, by basic definition, “a breathing hole; any minute passage; an opening by which a confined space has communication with the outer air; air hole.” (dictionary.com) While this term is predominantly used in the field of entomology, I’m applying it here in a different sense, tracing it back to the origins of the word: Latin spīrāculum air hole; spirare, to blow, breathe. Spirare is also the root for the word “spirit” (collinsdictionary.com), and the connection of these words felt important to me in the context of the themes of my text+image work. I was first introduced to the idea of the spiracle as a spiritual phenomenon several years ago via the essay “The Spiracle in Alchemy and Art” by Diane Fremont that looks at 16th century alchemist Gerhard Dorn’s concept of “the Spiraculum Eternitatis, the window or breathing hole into eternity,” and Carl Jung’s concept of alchemical conjunction as an expansion on this idea. Fremont goes on to apply this line of thinking to artist Cy Twombly’s oeuvre, notably ideas of visual openings in his photographic work.

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This idea of an animating spirit entering through such a “breathing hole” is appropriate to art making in general. As artists we are always hoping to give life to something new out of the raw materials we have chosen. This breath of life, the words of a creator, has a long history in human philosophy as both belief and metaphor. In Greek mythology, Pygmalion’s alabaster stature of Galatea comes to life after he prays his desires to the goddess Venus. The golem in Jewish folk literature is molded from clay and then animated by placing a paper inscribed with the Tetragrammaton (divine name of God) into the figure’s mouth. Even Adam in the Bible has life breathed into him by the Divine force, leading to, in that belief system, the proliferation of all humankind. Giving breath/speaking sacred words seems an inherent part of trying to turn nothing into something. In addition to trying to make openings for something external to animate what I am creating, I often find myself speaking directly to my paper and other materials as though they, too, are collaborators.

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The timing of acts of creation and devotion has historically also had great significance. The ancient Babylonians ascribed one of the seven classical planets to rule each day of the week and each hour of the day, using those attributions to govern ritual practice, with each planetary god contributing a particular kind of breath to its marked time. (This practice is still observed by contemporary magicians.) In Catholicism, “the Liturgy of the Hours, like many other forms of the canonical hours, consists primarily of psalms supplemented by hymns, readings, and other prayers and antiphons prayed at fixed prayer times...to sanctify the day with prayer.” (Wikipedia.com) In this case, the pattern of repeated recitation of key words makes those words exactly that – keys to doors that, when opened, let the Divine enter. These repetitions are a way to make the ordinary holy, to encounter the Divine in the daily, the commonplace, and were set down in “books of hours” as guides for individual daily prayers. A number of the pieces in Spiracles borrow quotes from early 20th century poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, a text deeply concerned with this same search for divinity in the tangible details of ordinary life. (Poetry, classically, is meant to be spoken, and it sets itself apart from other forms of writing through its use of repetition and pattern – its music.) This text appeals to me because it offers a very personal take on devotion; his concept of “God” feels accessible and universal. As someone who does not participate in organized religion or adhere to any particular system of faith, I still long to feel a connection to something beyond myself, the vast universal force that facilitates life and connects all things. Artistic process is, for me, a way to pray; techniques like repetition and pattern, and intuitive/chance-based methods are invitations for collaboration with that force.

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In Spiracles, I cross Rilke’s poetic assertions with other texts that speak to the subjects of spiritual communication, personal solitude vs. community, and artistic creation, increasing the conversation as these ideas intersect on the page and mingle into the fabric of each piece. The initial four pieces in this series were completed in 2022* as I aimed to find that alchemical moment when the work becomes more than the sum of its parts, the moment when connecting/layering two things creates the breathing hole, the potential for something unknown to enter. Since then, I have wanted to expand them into a larger series, and this show is the result of my efforts to do so in 2024. These pieces also address my concerns about meaningful repetition (in prayer and art and any other kind of relationship) becoming habits which are caging, that render once meaningful utterances cliched and rote. Within these pieces, different degrees of connection and separation are represented, so the struggle over this issue is made tangible. My answer to this concern in the past has been to remove – to become more solitary and to simplify mark making or compositions. I tried a different approach with Spiracles, instead increasing the repetition in those moments where excess seemed to form unhelpful, rigid boundaries and dead ends. The solution was to go even further into the chant – a new layer, new forms in overlaps, new visual values that forced me to resee overused shapes. Like the turning of the celestial gears, an alignment takes place in this push, and the channel opens again.  

As I worked, visual motifs proliferated, and techniques of pen and ink and monotype printing became more complicated, spreading throughout the new pieces. Each application of ink on the printing plate yielded unexpected results, forming another kind of opening for spirit in these works, especially when they were cut apart and redistributed across the page, creating even more unexpected alignments. I also continued applying color liberally, as it seemed to invigorate the whole experience, especially when used in ways that travelled through the entire body of work, weaving it together just as the text in each individual piece is intertwined. In the end, if it is the end of this series, I feel like more questions have been asked than answers given, and contradictions are certainly present, too. But that seems perfect for this meditative subject matter, an exploration more concerned with seeking than finding out anything definitive. Still, I sense a presence in these pieces that is beyond me and my hands, beyond the simple materials I employed.

 

*I referred at the time to the original four works as “Crossings.” They were part of a larger body of work first exhibited as part of a three-person show, Recalling the Chimaera, at Amis Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, in the spring of 2022. Work for that show and my cross-country travel (I was living in Oregon at that time) were supported by grants from the Oregon Arts Commission and the Ford Family Foundation.

 

Works consulted:

Fremont, Diane. “The Spiracle in Alchemy and Art.” ARAS Connections 3, 2017.

Lachman, Gary. "Homunculi, Golems, and Artificial Life." Quest 94.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2006):7-10.

“Looking At and Looking Through: Futurism, Dada, and Concrete Poetry.” poets.org February 16, 2005.