language

the slow and difficult trick of living - analog collage on 8.5x11 cardstock

"Use your words" they tell us. As if that's the secret to everything. As if our words are that precise and surgical. As if they're something sharp, direct, and cutting.

"We think because we have words, not the other way around", Madeleine L'Engle says. She says that "The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually."

She may be right. That may be true. But it doesn't feel that way to me.

linger in the fragile fleeting - analog collage on 8.5x11 cardstock

Most days, language feels like a blunt object. Like blunt force trauma. Like the one tool that sees everything in the world as something that needs to be hammered into place.

Glendy Vanderah says that despite all the linguistic cunning and advancement of the evolving human brain "We're still apes trying to express our thoughts with grunts". With whoops, and shouts, and hollers. All the while "most of what we want to communicate stays locked" away.

if this, then, that - analog collage on 8.5x11 cardstock

When I stand at my work bench and make collages, when I move through colors and textures, and shapes, I'm reminded that language isn't the first language we learned to speak. We used to spread our hands, our hearts, and our stories in paint and pigments across stone surfaces, as a way of communicating, as a way of understanding, as a way of coming to terms with our place in the world. And we did it long before we had words.

Some days it's hard for me to write. Most of them, actually. Some days it's even harder still for me to speak.

It's not because I have nothing to say. But because language is too inadequate of a medium to say everything that I need.

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P.S. ICAD - Day 115 - 117

hold together long enough to be a cloud - analog collage on 4x6 index card

the grandeur of myth - analog collage on 4x6 index card

we observe ourselves divided - analog collage on 4x6 index card

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P.P.S.

Words in Bloom

posted a stunning poem recently. There was a particular line that hit me in such a poignant and palpable way.

It inspired me to make this:

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P.P.P.S - I received notice that the pieces below were accepted into an upcoming exhibit put on by Studios At 5663 in Pinellas Park, Florida:

an elegance seemed to be missing - analog collage on 8.5x11 cardstock

the glass heart of the other world - analog collage on 4x6 index card

prove the idea - analog collage on A4 mixed media paper

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