Blog Post for De Villo Sloan Letter A - Project 26

[cheryl penn]

Mail Art received third week of February 2011

In his discussion on  letter A, De Villo Sloan wrote that  “Chapter A is about artifacts and archaeology. Many of the images come from out-of-print books about New York  State Native American artifacts. Most of them were made by the Iroquois or related cultural groups. So the real contributing artists here are prehistoric Native Americans".

The front page of Letter A bears De Villo’s  recognizable asemic script. What is archaeology? I see in the asemic script questions and answers.  There is a ring of validity in the structure of the text  - an attempt to communicate into and find synthesis with the way that those who have gone before have  lived.   An attempt to find a context for the present from the past?  Archeology is also about excavation and uncovering, a looking through the present into what has moved humans before.

Something I have noticed about this work is De Villo’s ability to marry the past with the present, to create a work that is current, whilst at the same time acknowledging the complex layers of history.  This palimpsest is created  by a veil of unconscious text which overlays and filters our perception of ancient narratives.  Asemic text which floats in the unconscious, but is still informed by the images that it partially conceals.

An acknowledgment of the structures and grids of language, images and experiences  which inform current understanding (thank you :-)) Archeology and its artifacts is about the recovery and documentation of previous structures.   Visually this is a very successful griding of bones and text – the skeleton of what lies beneath.   An innate knowledge of a framework which holds  up the world.

The ceramic data page (for Lisa) (See letter Z), coupled with a textually overlaid antiquarian map is another example of the complexities of archeological findings De Villo Sloan acknowledges in his work.  Maps to find where we are in history. The creation of a map that perhaps  some day,  the future will use to find us.

Filtering Masks. Abstracted representations. Covered once more.  A beautiful work, a visual musing of what follows in the rest of the book.   Thank you for supplying the FAB beginning of what is a fantastic collaboration of IUOMA members from all over the world.

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Mail received 29th October 2010.

Sometimes reactionary work can be disappointing. Not so this piece. This work is intuitive and conceptual, it is an instinctive reaction to the Crimson Giant.
De Villo believes my story has holes in it. Is there a story told, a life lived, a complete book of life that does not endures holes? We are not whole. I think conceptually he makes us aware of every story that is incomplete. Every story has damaged pages. We sometimes try the quick fix with external synthetic ties, but they don't work, do they? His instruction is to see the other side.

 

And you can if you try hard enough. Holes on the outside leave shadows on the inside. His aggressive treatment of the pages perhaps indicates the giant's aesthetic frustration - scissor/puncture/thrust/trash/twist - De Villo's folios echo the hole in the Crimson Giant as Babel is abandoned and he is left alone. But he repeats - SEE THE OTHER SIDE.

 

Is my speculation confirmed? I read injury. Perhaps I am reading De Villo's piece through the eyes of work I have just completed - I have posted another section to the book. It has to do with the abandonment of Babel and the Giant being left alone.

Am I seeing De Villo's work through the eyes of his reaction to work he has not even seen - that is why I think it is instinctual. Am I making the mistake of postmodern reflective writing about a work I think echoes the pessimism of post modernism?

 

 

 

Taped, gauzed over wounds, but wounds none the less. The Giant is Hurting.

 

 

No bandage is to big, no tape enough.

 

 

The wounds of pages before - no panacea is the right size.

 

 

And the repetition is always there. Are we capable of changing course?

 

 

 

Can the giant develop a unique symbolic language? Will he access his own visual idiolect?

 

 

I need some answers Sloan!

 

 

[cheryl penn]

Thanks Marie - I think its a fantastic beginning to Project 26 - the work is intrinsic to the concept -  the mythological archeological finding :-)

[Marie Wintzer]

Oh wow this chapter A is wonderful. I first saw a part of it on Lisa's blog and I fell in love. The asemic writing is blending in so nicely, the masks are great. Well, I like all of of it. And great blog Cheryl!

[Marie Wintzer]

He's alive! I'm going to make the holes a bit larger...

[cheryl penn]

Is the Crimson Giant alive?

[cheryl penn]

Creation is contrast, it is the moment pre-fission and the moment post-fission and all the stuff in between. It is the edge and the jump and the uncertain landing.

[Bifidus Jones]

The first thing I did when I opened up Sloan's pages was to put my fingers in the holes. That's the best part--very flux. And since Sloan has told us his intent for the section, I am too late to give my interpretations of the work. HOWEVER, I have this innate reluctance to see this collective work as something distopian. Why be afraid of contrast? Why be afraid of desert and of babel and of being alone? Creation/new ideas only come about from the contrast we see around us. Chaos is good in the same way that harmony is good because it compels us to create, to stir things up. That is what I think being alive is all about and that is the zing that flows through all artists' veins. It feels so good! (am I preaching here? I feel like I'm preaching here) and the Crimson Giant, if he is alive at all, can not be an observer for long. If he is alive at all, he must react. He must create something himself.

[De Villo Sloan]

Cheryl, thank you for being so thoughtful to not only photo and post my chapter for your The Crimsoned Giant book project but also to take the time to include such useful insights. Previous posts and lively discussions of chapters by Bifidus Jones, Erni Bar, Marie Wintzer, and Jen Staggs have contributed to making this a real learning experience and process of personal growth. A starting point for this discussion - I believe - was my blog posting of YOUR wonderful The Crimsoned Giant chapter and the discussion it began about aspects of language-image-text that seem to be at the center of this collaborative project. Erni Bar posted some commentary on his blog about my chapter that I found fascinating and increased my own self-awareness. Replies by Angie Cope/Snooker and others were heart-warming and made me very happy because I feel as if this chapter did speak to them in some positive way. The act of composition, you must surely know yourself, is messy and not necessarily very linear. One's intent can, to some degree, shift and change. I'll just trace out my thoughts and actions in creating this chapter for The Crimsoned Giant and address a few of the points about it raised by others:

THE LOST POEM: From the start, I had wanted my chapter for The Crimsoned Giant to be a representation (in the broadest sense) of a wasteland or desert that had to be crossed by the characters in order to move from whatever chapter came before it to whatever chapter was next. Initially, I had wanted to use a poem I wrote about a year ago that describes a caravan traveling through a desert. In addition to being barren, this desert is populated with ruins and produces mirages for the travelers. I thought about a passage I love in Antonin Artaud's description of traveling in Mexico. He passed through a mountainous region and saw (Aztec?) hieroglyphs inscribed everywhere on stones. I thought of this because of the glyphs you - Cheryl Penn - had created in your chapter of the Crimsoned Giant - and I had hoped to reproduce variants of them in my chapter. If I do say so myself, this might have made a fairly spectacular chapter. Alas, it was not to be. I could not FIND the poem. I am still fairly distressed because this is in a notebook of other poems I really want to save.

With time increasingly becoming a factor and seeing the tremendous chapters being created by others, I was at a loss about what to do myself. I even considered withdrawing from the project. But ultimately I couldn't do that - too many good friends involved. So I came back with a somewhat vague intent to create a chapter that would represent on a very material level the wasteland as the ruined and distressed pages of the book itself. Your excellent photos really capture this, I think. It might actually work. People have commented about the holes. I was humbled when Erni raised the comparison to William S. Burroughs and Burroughs' paintings using paint fired from shotguns that basically mutilates the canvas. I know the paintings well but I had not known about Burroughs' comment that the bullet holes represented on some level a unique way of entry into the work - breaking the surface of the artwork or text, shattering the traditional boundaries between "art" object and audience. I had not thought of this when composing the chapter; but after reading Erni's comment I thought: "That's it, that's what I'm doing." Snooker/Angie's comment about the piece being interactive and a record of a performance was just wonderful commentary and a very conscious intent on my part. I would hope that people who see The Crimsoned Giant put their own fingers in the holes I made (again breaking the surface of the text), re-tie the garbage bag twists, just get in there and enjoy interacting with it any way they like - it's a ruin already, so you don't have to worry about damaging it. So I don't believe the chapter can be fairly called reactionary when all is said and done. It does come out of that line of anti-art I know so well that goes out of its way to trash (thus the trash bag ties) anything aesthetic or "pretty."

THEORETICAL ISSUES: The Crimsoned Giant - from the start - has been concerned with ideas found in such heady places as postmodernism and semiotics. You are very astute to say that the "concept art" part of my chapter is completely absorbed with my disenchantment with postmodernism - especially the wing that says language does not allow us to connect with the world, it is the particularly human phenomenon that limits us from ever truly knowing our world. Various art and writing about postmodernism refers to mazes and circular systems that allow no escape. So, yes, the piece is a statement maybe not against but questioning the postmodern mind - and to evoke a constant theme of mine - make you aware of its decadence. And I was just COMPLETELY FLOORED when Erni pronounced my chapter was clearly postmodernist! And I was led to ask myself - can I/we ever become free of this ideology that has so effectively engulfed us with its clever theories and word games? Erni said he felt one needed to understand postmodernism to understand my chapter. No, I don't believe that's the case at all.

Anyway, thanks for all you are doing with The Crimsoned Giant project as well as others. I hope this answers some questions.

This isn't particularly, as I said, linear. But I hope it serves to address some of the excellent questions raised.