*initial idea - take passages from texts representative of the areas covered in the Honors College and make reversals of them.
I began making "reversal drawings" in 1996 or so. I select a commonly used phrase or cliche that contains the conjunction "and" or "or," and reverse the order of the words on each side of the conjunction; for instance, "determined and bound," "country and god," "weep and read 'em," "shine and rise." I'm interested in the potential for poetry and political commentary intrinsic in these reversals. That they might cause a viewer/reader to pause for even a second is also a desired effect, because in that nano second of doubt, the viewer is really engaged. In some ways, I see the act of reversal as a reclamation particularly appropriate for use in a culture that's tired and sick.
1 comment:
The most immediate thing that happens to me when I see one of your pieces is that I think about the words themselves -- often for the first time in a long while. When a timeworn phrase begins descending towards cliche, those words start to lose their power: submerged beneath the phrase's overall meaning, but also weighed down by overuse. One of the most striking things about your work is how a simple inversion often restores much of the power and energy those words once had.
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