![]() The words from the piece are borrowed from a letter sent by Vincent Van Gogh to his friend, Emile Bernard. ![]() Now, to google “Jasper Johns sign language.” ![]() (I want to be clear that this is something very different than communicating in with a deaf person in a deaf community, of which I claim to have no knowledge of or entitlement to, respectfully.) Daisy and I have had conversations in sign that made us both cry unexpectedly. Because this kind of talking has everything to do with looking and facial/body expression, it seems that telling a story or a feeling involves a physical reenactment of it. In my humble and limited experience signing with Daisy, I have postulated that signing with her allowed both of us to communicate our messages much more expressively that words. My curiosity about signing and language and the brain is one of the many reasons I’m interested in exploring sign language as an artist. This is sort of like how they say that memorizing lyrics to a song with a melody happens in a different part of the brain than memorizing text alone (sorry, no citation… look it up yourself.) I wish I could see a picture of my own brain working to do this, as I wonder how far from my normal language centers this visual/tactile reading is taking place. I found that the message on the left can be read with surprising fluency, especially if I move my hand along with the pictures, like reading aloud. If you can read the finger spelling signs on the piece on the left, you can see that the two messages are the same. ![]() Imagine my surprise when I saw this piece today at the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA. One project we were planning for was a letter written out with images of finger spelling. She is pursuing a degree in Sign Language Interpretation, and she’s taught me a fair amount of sign language in our free time together. JASPER JOHNS, FRAGMENT OF A LETTER, 2010I’ve been working with my friend, Daisy Stewart, on an idea centered around sign language, preparing for an upcoming exhibition at our Eight Folds studio at Noodleworks. ![]()
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