Words may be used to document, express,affirm, condemn, persuade or warn, even through a simple medium like a textmessage. All the while, these communications may be trivialized or misused.Through the interpretations of 25 international artists using multiple mediums,the JMKAC’s main gallery exhibits artwork addressing the nature of language.
Wisconsin’s Anne Kingsburyornately embellishes a page from a personal journal documenting her dailyactivities in Beaded Journal.Painstaking embroidery details a coverlet in a literal Thirty-Foot To-Do List by Melissa Damasauskas. These fiber artsdemonstrate the time required by life’s everyday activities, even mundaneevents like writing down a grocery list.
In the multilayered Dream Paper, California’sShana Lutker records her dreams on newsprint resembling The New York Times and places the documents around a table, so thatviewers may peruse her nighttime thoughts. LoveSongs: Multi-Story House, an installation (resembling a small tool shed)constructed by Mary Kelly and Ray Barrie, allows viewers to walk inside astructure and read fragments of personal quotations that revisit the feministmovement as perceived by women around the world.
These interactive and visuallystimulating artworks, which include images, paintings, photographs, sculpturesand even an enormous wall curtain, focus attention on the transmission oflanguage within contemporary culture and how it affects modern life. Whileobserving the works, one can’t help but wonder how to better use this powerfultool so often taken for granted.
“A Torrent of Words” continues through May 30 at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
