“…the ants, which once crossed the border between life and death, slip through the skin now, linking the outside and the inside, history and event, myth and injury. A puncture. A crack…the ants climb the inner face of the body’s organs and, laboring against tissues and mucous membranes, advance steadily until they reach the most intimate crevices, the rifts. Collectors on the surface, predators under the ground. The ants have already colonized every corner of the planet and yet, clearly unsatisfied, they now travel through the lymphatic system, the large intestine, the very fine network of veins and arteries, the hidden side of the tongue.
As my artist residency with New Harmony Clay Project comes to an end, I will be giving a lecture on my month of research and experimentation with ceramics at the Working Men’s Institute in New Harmony, IN on Wednesday, February 1st at 6pm.
For those not able to attend in person, you can also read about (W)hole Studies on my blog, Collector of Sorts.
"All the ways a line hallucinates its own linearity...The most insistent pressure. The body's refraction. The voice's. How they ridge, crosshatch, and section again. The dissociated self cannot be approached as an object. It cannot be laid out before us at the mouth of a room. The best we can do is trail its impressions."
-Danielle Vogel (The Way A Line Hallucinates Its Own Linearity)
Verbal language can often become lost in translation. The same can be true of visual language. What is clear can also be transparent and therefore invisible. Misunderstood, or mistranslated entirely. This room holds visual words that have yet to be spoken. It is up to the audience who enters this mouth of a room to interpret what is seen and create for themselves a sentence structure of lines, shapes, colors, and subjects.
Elizabeth Arzani and Tanner Lind’s work ask different questions about systems: both absent and present. Tanner’s abstractions create spaces that consider the balance between intention and unpredictability, asking questions about how things come to be. Alternatively, Elizabeth’s works on paper map the unknown in curvilinear detours, offering forms of communication that extend language. Off the page, curved forms are translated in ceramics that ask questions about the space of transitions; where things connect, are forced, or just won’t work.
I am excited to share that you will be able to find, At Finger’s End, a collaborative book I made with artist Tanner Lind included in Carnation Contemporary’s artist book fair curated by Hannah Newman and Kris Blackmore.
“The Extended Ear: An Artist Book Fair celebrates and questions the act of publication. At a time when everyone is making a podcast, releasing a vlog, or starting a newsletter, what does it mean to publish? What does it mean to publicly memorialize our thoughts, and why are artists in particular drawn to this act, whether through print, image, video, or sound? What is it about the art making process that so often leads to an output through print and language? Part of language’s power is in its ability to rapidly replicate, but does publishing become more or less powerful with access provided by social platforms and self-publishing options? Why is it culturally important to have a distinctive voice? And if everyone is talking, who is listening?”
Opening Reception will feature performances & vinyl DJ set by Blaine Hurdle of Needles and Pins Jewelry
(Left) Curator, Holly Keogh speaking with yours truly (right) in front of my work, Sentences I Keep Near (November), (Left) and In Pockets and Seams (Right)
“Some species of night-blooming flowers, such as Selenicereus grandiflorus, bloom only once a year for one night. This is a poetic counterpoint to a world where the next is always the now. The exhibition celebrates each artists’ individual journey from the seed of an idea to the tangible work standing before us.”
