DOCUMENTATION for Asemics 16 Mail-Art Book Chapter (Ed. #1) by Skybridge Studios (Indiana, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art by IUOMA member Skybridge Studios (Indiana, USA)

 

July 25, 2011 - I know Skybridge Studios thought long and hard before committing to the Asemics 16 collaborative mail-art book project.  She asked the hard questions and came to her own understanding of asemic writing. As you can see from the scans of this chapter contribution to edition #1, the result of her efforts are spectacular. This is a tremendous example of work that is "Asemically Correct" without any of the negative connotations associated with that term:

 

 

Compared with other artists, Skybridge has taken a relatively minimal approach. She uses a basic black, white, and red color scheme. She clearly approached the subject from the perspective of a visual artist. The syntax of word and image seen in chapters by others is absent. These have created many fascinating hybrids with collage and visual poetry that have been a unique product of the project. The absence, to me, in no way diminishes the achievement of Skybridge's chapter. The power and grace of her fluid asemic writing carry the pages easily.

 

The center pages use the extra horizontal space to present writing within writing, an interesting approach to the prevalent layering concept:

 

 

 

For me, the Skybridge chapter does not take a narrative approach or a poetic series approach used to such great advantage by Sue Bowen (Virginia, USA). Skybridge's chapter is, rather, an organic unfolding that takes the reader along in a process of discovery. The symbols evolve, deepen, give birth to new symbols and generate unique forms in which they arrange themselves:

 

 

I am finding how the artist's choose to bring closure to their chapters is fascinating because much of this work seems to want to keep going:

 

This strikes me as being a reiteration or summary of the discoveries made on the preceding pages.

 

This Asemics 16 contribution by Skybridge Studios confirms for me something I thought I might be seeing as the various chapters are displayed: A psycho-analytic perspective might shed light and heighten our understanding of asemic work by a portion of the artists. This is related to the automatic writing experiments of the surrealists that attempted to bring images of the unconscious into writing and drawing - with apparent success. "Reading" asemic writing this way involves looking for images and word fragments embedded in the work. I hope to explore this idea elsewhere, as I cannot seem to find anything about it on the literature of asemic writing.

 

Anyway, many thanks Skybridge Studios for this beautiful work!

[cheryl penn]

Great work and blog. The writing over the writing - wonderful - interesting that Asemic writing is NOT black and white in terms of what it is, yet Lisa has chosen to depict it in these 'colors'.  We know of course that they're NOT colors, and this is NOT traditional writing. A good analogy.

[De Villo Sloan]

Hi Sue, yes! Painterly but still asemic. I'm wowed by how expressive it is. It is so interesting for me to post these chapters. The variety is amazing, and this chapter is very different from yours. I can't wait to see them together in the books. We're getting there. Thanks again SB-PL.

[prettylily]

This is a lovely free flowing approach.  I love the confident storkes and writing.  Well done!