26 Letters for the Deaf, 2013
A 1972 gouache on paper by Calder provided the visual springboard for this body of work, which includes 26 paintings paper, the same number as letters in the alphabet. Each painting is like a symbol or a sign, the shapes taken from my One Big Love series, and together they stand for a visual language that is autonomous and pre-lingual.
Duchamp’s The Blind Man and Beatrice Wood’s entry in Volume I, “To laugh is very serious,” provided further inspiration. I am taking my cue from a moment in art history when the conventions of representation were on the brink of collapse to create a visual alphabet that is serious in its playfulness, joyful in its seriousness and resolute in its lack of linguistic fixity.
Each painting is done in gouache on paper and measures 11” x 7 ½.”