Statements: Glossolalia and Expressions in Collage
 

Glossolalia

n. The ability or phenomenon to utter words or sounds of a language unknown to the speaker, especially as an expression of religious ecstasy. Also called "speaking in tongues."

For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. --1 Cor 14:2

Tradition teaches that to speak in tongues is to utter the language of the divine. The speaker does not control or understand what she is saying, but trusts that that language, given by God, has a building, creative effect on herself and on the world around her. I began practicing this ancient form of prayer after months of Scripture studies and dedication to my own spiritual development.

I had always considered the role of the spiritual as integral to my work, but this is the first series where I have focused primarily on creating nonrepresentational paintings that are truly driven by that inner voice, with glossolalia itself serving as a vocal vehicle. For the past three years, I have included speaking in tongues in my painting and artmaking, in a kind of intercollaborative creative process. I’ve created these paintings in an automatic fashion, layering repetitive, script-like marks over background washes, and working intuitively and in synch with the sound and unconscious “leading” of tongues. The resulting works illustrate a dialogue and interaction heretofore unexplored in a contemporary context, and create a new spiritual and aesthetic experience for a modern audience. They are also, on a personal level, the most visually palpable aspect of my ever-evolving relationship--both spiritual and creative--with the divine.
 

Expressions in Collage

Previous to Glossolalia, my work primarily focused on collage of various media, and employing those media to create personal translations of various aspects of modern urban life, works that allowed me to exercise my analytical, Deconstructionist skills as well as my childhood love of jigsaw puzzles. I have always been interested in the rule-breaking versatility of collage and its conceptual aspects and potential; I have found it a useful way to express multiple layers of reactions to my environment. In addition, collage allows the artist to give new life to old things, to create something from what someone else threw away. I truly enjoy wielding this kind of resurrection power.

The most diverse and animated of my collage works is the series I call Subbajungle, where I depict the insides of subway cars as surreal landscapes, transforming poles into metallic trees and tulips and commuters into monkeys, butterflies, and other creatures. These works are meant to convert drudgery into delight, re-imagining the everyday commute as a subterranean hybrid of Jacques Cousteau, Martha Stewart, and Steve Irwin.

The series before this, Word Underground, allowed me to indulge in my love-hate relationship with the New York subway system. Metrocards were just becoming popular and the marketing campaign was in full swing--and at the time, advertising was a great a pet interest for me. For three works in this series, I created collages that were realistically gritty and dirty, and that bore slogans (in three different languages) from the MTA ad campaign, spelled out in real Metrocards. I also named the pieces after the slogans from the spider’s web in Charlotte’s Web, a book that I loved as a kid and still consider a child’s primer in advertising.

School of Small Change came about after these large-scale, multi-media series were complete. My work became smaller and more intimate. In reaction to Matthew 17:27, I sketched a series of little cartoons about fish and coins in a pond, then created a series of small, child-like collages on wood that depicted these scenarios or scenes of fish hunting for coins, coins hiding from fish, fish bartering coins from each other, etc.