Thursday, July 10, 2008

Artists On Words Has Kicked Off!

The Collaborative Project "Artists On Words" has kicked off. See Joanne Mattera's words and work above. More will follow. The submissions have been great and I very much appreciate the artists taking the time to participate.
To get things started I sent an invitation letter through email(see below). What's been interesting so far is the way different people have responded to the project, perhaps in some sense, reflecting an individual's relationship with written language and how they communicate. Some people are intuitive and spontaneous and others are more contemplative and deliberate. Some have responded quickly and others have taken more time.
Over the next few weeks I will post the responses in no particular order.

Dear Artists,

As you may know I have kept a blog called “Color Chunks” since 2006. If you have seen the blog, you know what it is about. It’s been fun, but I’ve decided I want to change the direction a bit. That’s where you come in.

As an Artist, and working as such, sometimes these words pop into my head and really seem to “capture” a particular facet of my work. They sometimes never turn into a “proper” artist’s statement but continue to bounce around in my head, remaining as a fragment. Or perhaps a word that I hadn’t thought of before springs upon me unexpectedly, makes sense at the time, but somehow gets lost. Have you had similar experiences? The following is an attempt to capture those fragments.

Below you’ll see a list of words in no particular order. Read over the list. If a word jumps out at you, if you feel there is a word that might relate somehow with the art you do, please write a few sentences on it(maybe a paragraph or two—more?), send it to me with a jpg of your work and I’ll post it on “Color Chunks”. The headings will read something like--- “Ron Buffington On Selection”, “Chris Ashley On Chance” etc. along with your work and whatever you choose to write.

I plan to post your writing without any editing, although I reserve the right to, okay? You can change the form of the words—“Saturation” can be “Saturated”, “Series” can be “Serial”. The list is a mix, with some words being kind of obvious in the artist’s lexicon—“Repetition” for example. Some are less obvious in connotation and more whimsical, like “Sponges”.

The more people participate the better it gets. I’m more interested in observing how things shape themselves, rather than achieving some kind of coherence from the top down.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John, I like this idea. But is it by invitation only? If this project is open to everyone, we need an email address.

Thanks,

Oriane Stender

John Tallman said...

Oraine, thanks so much for your interest!

You can send your words and jpgs to moahksan@yahoo.com