In a recent blog post, writer Amy Weldon noted that the 2007 revised edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary replaced words relating to nature--acorn, catkin, kingfisher, nectar, pasture--with words relating to corporate culture and technology. Many opposed these changes, asserting that it is with and through language that we see and engage with the world. Nature, in some very real way, disappears when our language for naming and talking about it disappears. As Wittgenstein posits, "We picture the world to ourselves," and it is through language that we picture it.
Over the summer, I have been working on a series of small heads and other forms--acorns, squashes, peppers, rocks, logs--and combining them into small assemblages, which I am provisionally calling One of these is not like the other. The processes through which we gather, sort, distinguish, compare and analyze the world originate in our material experience of the world. The forms I have been making originate in my daily tasks and activities--caring for the garden, harvesting and preserving produce, taking daily walks to collect interesting flowers, roots and seed pods--and in the faces I see around me in this diverse city. The small heads reflect my memories of people I see, specifically young people, with their colourful hair, tattoos and optimistic energy. I have tried to reflect the ambiguity and non-binary diversity of their ethnicity and gender, which I see as models of how we might go forward. The forms are pierced, allowing them to be provisionally assembled (configured, re-configured). Threaded onto metal rods, their combinations suggest sentences or expressions. Similarity and difference play off each other, threading the world together.
Over the summer, I have been working on a series of small heads and other forms--acorns, squashes, peppers, rocks, logs--and combining them into small assemblages, which I am provisionally calling One of these is not like the other. The processes through which we gather, sort, distinguish, compare and analyze the world originate in our material experience of the world. The forms I have been making originate in my daily tasks and activities--caring for the garden, harvesting and preserving produce, taking daily walks to collect interesting flowers, roots and seed pods--and in the faces I see around me in this diverse city. The small heads reflect my memories of people I see, specifically young people, with their colourful hair, tattoos and optimistic energy. I have tried to reflect the ambiguity and non-binary diversity of their ethnicity and gender, which I see as models of how we might go forward. The forms are pierced, allowing them to be provisionally assembled (configured, re-configured). Threaded onto metal rods, their combinations suggest sentences or expressions. Similarity and difference play off each other, threading the world together.