The Beginning

In my first semester at MassArt, one of my favorite professors taught me that text detracts from fine art. He told my class that you should always be able to convey your message using visual language as opposed to written language. For those who know me, it might be surprising to hear that I absolutely agreed with him. He and I both thought that it was lazy and flat to billboard statements to communicate a point. I always thought that I was an artist, not a poet or a writer, so I stayed away from the written word as much as I could. (1)

Two years later, I hit a wall. I’ve struggled with depression my whole life, but it had never immobilized me like this before. My drive to create sputtered out completely. I spent my days with my head in the clouds and a weight in my chest. At night I would toss and turn, a whirlwind of thoughts keeping me awake. The only thing I could think to do was write them down, so I did.

Every night I would spill my guts in my notes app until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and every day in class I would fill notebook pages with poetry. I was constantly exhausted, so detached that I became a deer in the headlights every time someone talked to me. (2)

I didn’t know what to do.

One night, on my walk home from school, I just started crying. I couldn’t stop, but I needed to pick up some groceries. It was hard enough to get myself to run the errand, but all I could hope was that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew.

But, life is cruel, so of course I ran into one of my classmates. I didn’t know this person well, but we stopped to exchange pleasantries. I stood there, red faced and misty-eyed, with a smile plastered across my face. I wanted so badly for them to see me, comfort me. But I didn’t let them.

Like a wounded animal, I pushed away all help until I couldn’t anymore. (3)

Eventually, I knew I just needed to start making again. So, I created as many material studies as I could, with little to no expectations.(4) I used anything and everything available to me. I experimented with transparency and refractions, pulled by the visual distortion both can create.

The last study I made was simple, a scrap of tulle embroidered with the question: “Can you still see me?” (5)

The culmination of everything I was feeling was entirely contained in that question.

“Can you still see me?”

I layered this piece of tulle over everything I could, enamored with the way the text interacted with the background, pushing and pulling out of sight.

Soon after, I created it’s not like it's a secret, a piece stuffed with glass and scraps with text layered directly on top. The text of this piece is a fragment from a poem (6) I wrote shortly after my grocery store encounter.

it’s not like it’s a secret was the first time I fully embraced the marriage of visual and written language within my work. For the surface of the piece I used bright colors and stimulating textures to present a playful facade. In contrast, the text is raw and emotional with the visual confusion providing a safety net of illegibility.

From here, I began building a series of works further exploring how I could use illegibility as a tool to subvert a viewer's expectations.

footnotes

(1) It is important to note that my aversion to the written word also stemmed from a fear of vulnerability. I thought that anything that I wrote earnestly was cheesy or cringey. I thought if I bore my soul to the world people would point and laugh, but the opposite is true. As humans, we need to connect with one another, but that is impossible if we are all constantly pretending to feel nothing

(2)  Affievolire: (italian), to weaken, to quiet, to diminish

(3) Blur: to take given information and shift or smudge “: to obscure or blemish by smearing” - Merriam-Webster

(4) Play: joyous exploration of how things could be “: to toy or fiddle around with something” - Merriam-Webster

(5) This phrase was pulled directly from a poem I was writing at the time. The poem illustrated my depression as a labyrinth within my mind, dark corridors that I traversed deeper and deeper into. I felt as though I was lost in these corridors, so deep that those around me could no longer see me. The text became a self portrait, that I then layered over a literal self portrait painted on scraps of fabric I had dyed.

(6) you see through the walls i've built of cellophane, 

you see the tear stains on my flushed cheeks, 

you hear the shake in my voice.

but still you say nothing.