My talk for "Sense of a Sack"

For a Lack of Words  – Text-inspired images in “Sense of a Sack”

I have a very early memory — perhaps I was seven or eight — of me sitting on the kitchen counter while my mother spoke to me. Toward the end of each of her sentences, I would try to guess what she was going to say next in order to say it before she could. While this might seem smart-alecky, my intention was to save her some of her allocated words. You see, I had gotten it into my head that there was a cap on the number of words we get to use in our lifetimes, and since I was much younger than her, I could spare a few of mine.

The idea of a finite and set number of words suggests that words have a concrete quality. One could easily imagine words being dispensed from a jar, and from this see a future for me that would include an interest in two-dimensional and three-dimensional artistic expression. Indeed, I could very well invert the transition and make a similar case for making mudpies as a child, and being disappointed that I was not rhetorically skilled enough to convince anyone to taste them. But the more factual story is that I started writing poetry and stories in high school, a practice that continued through college and beyond. Yet, by the time I was out of college I had moved into performance art as well, and because of the spatial quality of the stage, sculpture and other media were not far behind. And now, words, images and objects are all art forms I use.

Still, there have been plenty of times when one of these art forms, specifically words, has either failed me or been pushed aside at the insistence of, or reliance on, other media. However, over time, and particularly in the last three years, all of the art forms I use have begun to share the same space. In truth, it remains a struggle, not because I have not found ways to incorporate all of them, but the level of self-disclosure and honesty the words seem to insist on leave me with a sense of completion that I find uncomfortable. The apparent success turns into a kind of destructive force that annihilates the mystery and my motivation that would otherwise encourage me to continue along these same lines of inquiry. I don’t fully understand it, yet it seems to be a kind of neurosis for it is such an uncomfortable, dissatisfying state that I have no choice but to distance myself and retreat into the relative safety of nonverbal abstraction. Eventually, however, something begins to suggest something else, a resolve rears its ugly head again and the process of negation begins afresh.  I have given this overall practice, this serially compulsive dialectic, the title, “For a Lack of Words,” and examples are represented here in this exhibit, “The Sense of a Sack.”

At this point in time, “For a Lack of Words” has manifested as three bodies of work. The first is called “Gist” and is primarily text-based. “A Persistent Hum” is the sole example of this work in the installation. The “Gist” series itself arose out of a long-standing observation of the forms words take on a page, either like a poem’s structure (whether as a sonnet or free verse) or, in the case of prose, as a somewhat arbitrary effect of the typesetting. I am keenly aware of and sometimes distracted by the word spacing when I read. When these unintentionally framed blocks of text are isolated from the manuscript — if they make any sense at all —  create a new body of text that sometimes paraphrases the original but more often than not create new, albeit tangential ideas. The words are conditionally liberated. I say “conditionally” because they are already placed in a new jar... or even a sack.

In that most of my reading is art or philosophy-related, the pieces often reference these subjects, which I find appropriately and pleasingly meta. Every “Gist” is then presented as a photograph in order to document the find. I have captured over one hundred of these pieces over the last three years, but as a corollary to the neurosis I described earlier, the success of this work has made me to put them aside until a time comes that I can either literally or figuratively push them outside of their boxes.

Once again, I move away from words, which makes for a transition to the two sculptures, “Love Poem” and “Maquette for the Title of a Poem Intended to Be Read Aloud.” I have taken the idea of words on a page, removed the words and replaced them with shapes that mimic the placement of letters and words. Many of the individual shapes in “Love Poem” are suggestive, not only of letters but also of discrete objects and not-so-discrete activities. “Maquette,” however, is a little more oblique: The notebook is where poems are written, and the gum is chewed, thereby suggesting the mouth, and when arranged like text, becomes a stand-in for the spoken word, hence a poem read aloud.

The hand plays a role in these sculpture as much as it does in drawing or, for the sake of another transition in this talk, penmanship. The third body of work in “For a Lack of Words” echoes calligraphy, but as drawings they are more like cryptograms.Initially inspired by Asian scripts and the artists Robert Motherwell and Cy Twombly, this may be my longest-running series of work, numbering in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, over twenty years or more. I make these drawings as an exercise in formal considerations. The decisions are quickly made, almost reflexive, like speaking in tongues with a pen or brush. The linear aspects balance the expressive and visually lyrical qualities. It is through the repetition and consistency of their structure that the drawings suggest content, whether it be words, or in the case in “Studies I – IV,” a transition from letters and words to landscapes and then back again. And here’s a clue: think of the color aspects as using a HiLiter in your textbooks.

But one might ask what this has to do with a sack, or for that matter, as I have indicated in my press statement, inspiration from Jacques Lacan? I have little desire to speak at length about Lacan and his approach to psychoanalysis, or if you prefer in this case, psycholinguistics, for at this particular moment I favor the primacy of the artist over the necessarily anachronistic methodologies of critical examination. Nor do I think much good comes from cramming the latter into a shape that attempts to fulfill the needs of the former.

I will, however, allow Lacan’s passage from which I derived the title of this exhibit. Early in his 23rd Seminar he writes, (quote) “The astonishing thing is that form gives nothing but the sack, or if you like the bubble. It is something which inflates, and whose effects I have already described in discussing the obsessional, who is more keen on it than most.” (end quote) Never mind that the obsessional has been given personhood in this passage — not so curious a notion once Lacan mentions that the sack is also a skin, nor strange to the self-aware artist, suitably petulant in his or her fascination with both the sack and what should fulfill its purpose. Instead, I keyed on the word “form,” that it “gives nothing but” and how this double negative gives an artist both something to push against and to draw near, to discover anew through serialization and put at risk in favor of an unknown. The sack, thusly passive, still remains that in which things are placed. It has meaning only in regard to a function, and that is to be filled — whether we fill the sack or are the sack that it to be filled. Likewise, as it seems to me in the widest sense possible — and I think  Lacan would agree with me on this point — it is the artist’s mania to both fuck and be fucked.

It is here that we can return to the work presented in the exhibition, for if you have not already gathered, there are formal aspects that connect the individual works, primarily in the choice of marks made or in the case of a couple of the photographs, observed. We may also refer to these marks as content, which is well and good as I had no grand intentions beyond the obvious in this regard. Other connections are more discreet, which I would hope provides some depth to the individual viewing experience. After all, how can the artist be responsible for or anticipate the experiences, knowledge and other realities a viewer brings to the work? Indeed, my own experience of the work has shifted in that one piece, the book that is listed on the price sheet but is missing from the exhibit proper, has taken on an unanticipated meaning for me, it’s creator. It is my understanding that few, if any have asked to see it unless I am here to force it upon them, epitomizing, if you will, a certain sense of loss that persists throughout the exhibit.

That melancholy now extends to the fact that my exhibit is about to be dismantled. I would therefore hope that after my talk this audience becomes viewers one last time around. So, in closing yet in an effort to prolong my experience at Place, while at the same time knowing that I can beg your indulgence within reason, I shall offer some final, hopefully clarifying remarks about how specific pieces are intended to work with others, all to create the theme of this exhibit. And I shall do so recognizing the risk I take of belaboring the obvious.

I will start with the Studies I – IV. To my mind, if we take each of these little paintings on their own terms, they are rather unremarkable.Nothing special at all. I have confessed to those closest to me, and now to you, that I think they are rather ugly little paintings. Yet, overall, I am rather pleased with what they have become. As a group I find them beautiful. They reinforce each other in their framing and from frame to frame, developing a syntax or telling a story, if you will, moving away from abstraction into something we can speak to as an aspect of nature or a landscape. The colors highlight points of particular interest while bringing an additional meaning to the title of the pieces in their arrangements: It is how many of us study, that is searching out and demarcating key passages in texts. Yet, it may matter little to the audience that I prefer to bracket such passages and here have used the colors to mark where I thought each individual piece failed.

The video, “The Written Wood,” continues along the same lines. The video suggests an indeterminate text. Yet, it is not an easy piece to watch, or to listen to. The distress is intentional. Even an elucidation does not come easy; the visceral is not readily salved. This also aligns with an idea I have regarding the practice of asemic writing. (Asemic writing is a type of drawing that is somewhat loosely aligned to visual poetry. It is called “asemic” because it is said to have no specific semantic content. Many of the pieces in this show can be considered Asemic.) Words sometime elude us, not because of a limited vocabulary but more that we are not ready for, or capable of an understanding, whether it be within us or coming from an external source. Instead of a finite number of words at our disposal, there may be none. In such cases, the scribble, is a stand-in for the desire to express regardless.

Jumping over to the photo “I Ching,” I would simply point out that despite a lack of understanding, we nevertheless make some attempt to gain insight through some formal process. With the I Ching, the search for revelation is both internal and external, yet intentionality is still riddled with the arbitrary. If this doesn’t echo intersubjectivity, I don’t know what does.

And then quickly to “Coralish 5,” even when we find an appropriate symbol, its endurance is not guaranteed. What once may have been made in the shape of a turtle has been transformed by either thoughtless vandalism or mindless yet purposeful tectonics. Language is in flux.

Words, after all, are mere stand-ins, and whether they are used to describe or defend, comfort or cajole, elucidate or seduce, they offer a security that is deceptive.Yet, in order not to leave on a sour note, I will amend that last sentiment by adding that this deception is one we necessarily must allow ourselves, like an unconscious sin of omission that is the fragility of communication. There is always something missing, yet this in no way means that these attempts toward meaning are not creative endeavors.