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6 sheets of 2mm glass, handwritten and engraved on both sides and spaced 5mm apart above a background image which is also layered. This background image comprises a sheet of translucent polyester film with large white calligraphy handwritten by automatic pen at top and bottom and on both sides of the film. The duralar sheet is laid over and glued to a unique original print on watercolor paper. The archival print features shadowy blurs derived from scans from the actual glass writings and calligraphy in small Roman caps. The glass sheets also feature many droplets of clear resin which appear as water droplets floating within the text mass.The depth of the work is 2" and the work is composed within this 3-D space in a way that cannot be reproduced. Unfortunately the subtlety and transparence is also lost in reproduction.

The central mass of black writing is an exercise in what I am call "polyrhythmic calligraphy". The form of the cursive writing is not based on a single character style- multiple forms repeat regularly, including forms with bowls made of a single blob of ink (a, e, o, b, etc.); extended flourished forms, and simple narrow forms. The letter-spacing is not fixed but eccentric, I compare it to the compressions and rarefactions in a waveform. The polyrhythms are further developed by repeating this type of script in layers:some of which are reversed so the writing appears backwards- a trick I use to create a counter rhythms. Shadows cast by these layers form additional repetitions which enrich the rhythms.

Text:
You come to me
a bird shedding gold feathers,
each one a quill scraping my tympanum.
You set a book to my ribs.
Night after night I unclasp it
at the mirror's edge

alphabets flicker and soar.
Write in the light
of all the languages
you know the earth contains...
you murmur in my ear.
This is pure transport.

From Illiterate Heart by Meena Alexander.
Published in 2002 by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press.

 

©2006 Denis Brown  |  www.quillskill.com