I Hope My Art Gets a Tan

I just finished a new piece called The Thing About Money. It's going to Miami to the Aqua Art Fair, where it will be exhibited by Gallery Joe, along with Declaration and Not Properly Respecting Otherness.



You can see a bigger picture by clicking the image above.

The text reads very differently when you get up close. There are clouds in the background that contain a whole section of text that elaborates and casts doubt upon the main statement.



I've decided to focus on making these text drawings for a while. It's very satisfying to work in this hybrid language of words and images. I love that I can make subplots and digressions just by writing in smaller letters, and I like the idea of making jokes, statements, and dogmas that don't sit quietly in their proper category.



It's fun to show the work to people because they read it one way when they're far away then another way when they get to the arrows. The arrows say "Absolutely Nothing", and they come before the words "Perfectly Clearly." So watching people view the piece has the effect of telling them a joke.

I'm also really into the puffed up Victorian grandeur of the way I'm making the main statements: it makes the homely parts of what I write extra funny to me.



There's a way in which fonts work as voices. These pieces can have multiple characters who say things outside of my voice, and I can express different levels of authority by using different kinds of writing. I like that I can contradict myself and be divided about an issue or an idea in one piece. Making these pieces is like taking a cubist approach to a statement: there's a central proposition and several million ways of attacking that idea within the body of the drawing.

There's something very satisfying and human about being able to express doubt and certainty in this way. I like doubt. My declaration piece is all about doubt, but I think I might have to do another piece about it.



That said, I'm delighted that Becky Kerlin of Gallery Joe likes this new work enough to take it to Aqua. There's nothing like the removal of doubt, either.