On and Off the Page

The word itself is under the lens at Lamont Gallery as progressive visual interpretations of language are featured in On & Off the Page. The exhibition, including works from crocheted cassette tape and text-imbued ceramics to songs of Columbian struggle, opened last Monday and will run until October 19.Many of the pieces exhibited in On & Off the Page explore the intersection of writing, the design of letters and the physical media through which information is transmitted."These artists are very interested with the materiality of text," Lamont Gallery Director Lauren O'Neal said. More and more we tend to think of text in the abstract, and all of these are very embodied works.Three works of crocheted cassette tape by artist Nicola Vruwink feature excerpts of song lyrics from the heyday of that technology. "I have always wanted to work with cassette tape it's very much about my youth, and my love of music and how we communicated," Vruwink said. "The action of making a mixed tape was to show a very conscientious, physical engagement as much as it was to make music."Artist Maureen Mills highlighted the form of text in her wood-fired ceramics covered with words she describes as not-readable. "The work deals with graphic text and design, so the use of words creates relatable visual imagery," Mills said. "I use the words Transitional Language, meaning that it's relatable as language the art transitions to a more graphic design element than actual words."Exeter Alumnus Peter Beaman '63 co-wrote a featured novel named Deck of Cards, a collection of 52 unattached pages that can be read in any order. "At the time [of my writing] there was a lot of interest in interest on the web of doing interactive fiction, back in the early days of the Internet. I wanted to relate those concepts and put them in a book form," Beaman said. "If I give someone the book I always shuffle the book in front of them, so they know that there is no canonical order."To reflect on the theme of the collection, the Gallery is launching a project titled Unexpected Poetry in conjunction with the student-run Poetry Society, which will place poetry in random places on campus through the coming weeks. "I wanted a way to highlight student and alumni work being able to work with Pete [Beaman] was great, and since there are so many writers on campus now we wanted to make connections with this show and some of the work that is being produced here," O'Neal said. "I like the idea that we are all so busy running around and then smack in the middle of, say the Dining Hall, you might encounter a lovely piece of poetry or prose that might make you stop and think."Upper Philip Decker, as Poetry Society head and project adviser, is selecting works to be included in the project. "If you meet poetry in a place you had expected to be mundane, it has a much different effect, and causes you to reconsider its meaning," Decker said. "You expect poetry to be bound to the world of paper, but poetry in the real world takes on a life of its own and is enhanced by the surroundings it originally attempted to describe it sheds the stigma of just being a collection in a book."Several artists' work relates the concept of words to the technology used to communicate them.Vruwink's work, featuring the outmoded medium of the cassette tape, tries to illustrate her idea of what might have been recorded. "It's very important to me that the material I'm using is recorded it's recorded voices, it's recorded words which have been completely erased, as cassettes have become completely outdated technology," Vruwink said.Several pieces by artist Liz Maugans are featured in On & Off the Page, including a piece that consists of signs featuring text taken from Craigslist. "I took the words on the signs verbatim from around the country, by what came up from typing desperate into the search engine," Maugans said. She created the printed signs from woodcut reliefs, a slow process that contrasted with that of Craigslist. "When you're carving the little letters out of or around the wood, it's not like cutting through linoleum which is more effortless it's very restrictive, you make a lot of mistakes, and it captures those human flows. It slows down the process from what you see on the Internet, messages that are very easy and quick to send, to something that is something slowed down, something to linger on," she said.According to Vruwink, her pieces also reflect the pace of modern life. "The idea is that the pace of our world is increasing, it just gets faster and faster and in some ways it's also driving us apart. My process is really about slowing down the act of crocheting takes forever it is very different from the communication we do today."According to O'Neal, the Gallery was inspired to include many of the works because of Exeter's curricular history. "Exeter has such a great history of classes, coursework, and programs that connect to the literary arts, we wanted a show that spoke to our tradition and also provided a visual answer to our heritage, from the Lamont Poets, the classes, and all of the writers that come out of this school," O'Neal said.Beaman says that his Deck of Cards was influenced by his time at the Academy. "In terms of the writing in the style that I use, I would say that English courses at Exeter were definitely steps along the way to my approach," Beaman said. "Certainly I had a great interest during the time that I was at Exeter in both experimental and avant-garde fiction, so the book directly reflects that interest."Along with the artworks featured in Lamont, the Gallery is hosting talks and workshops with five artists over the next week, and is displaying books from the Academy Library.