Write Me Some Letters

Organizing an art exhibit around works that incorporate words casts a wide net. Words show up all the time in art—in collages, captions, labels or bits of signage captured in the field of vision. Some artworks, like Jenny Holzer’s LED displays, are nothing but words.

Interestingly, though, the omnipresence of words in artworks is a relatively recent phenomenon. Go back a couple of centuries and you don’t see words everywhere. Occasionally an artist would break the illusion of real space by inserting spoken words, like the strips of text in Jan van Eyck’s “Annunciation.” But today the physical world is slathered with words—billboards, street signs, bumper stickers, graffiti. Like a NASCAR champ, we cover every available inch of surface area with messages. We bathe ourselves in words, and they inevitably splash over into art.

In a world swimming in words, Works With Words is an apt theme for a show, particularly at the Nashville Public Library. Like the library’s 2005 show on artist books, this group show includes contributions from a gaggle of area artists who try many variations on the theme. The forms they use include books, settings for poems, text and visuals that amplify each other, images with words as captions, and compositiotns built with words. In the end, the exhibit provides a good take on the range of Nashville artists, and on their limitations.

The title is somewhat misleading—the art here doesn’t incorporate words as much as writing. Words—those little packets of meaning—are represented both by graphic symbols and the phonetic sounds of speech. This show has no audio elements, and in many cases the words are illegible, leaving the viewer instead with writing as a kind of marking.

Among the pieces that deal with writing more than words is Laura Chenicek’s “Reviewed Bias.” A pretty landscape has a zipper running on a diagonal right down its middle. It is partially unzipped to reveal a white layer underneath, covered with handwriting. You can see the writing, but can’t make out the words. Chenicek’s work often addresses the expectations viewers and critics have of her as a woman and artist. In this case, a pretty landscape hides something more discursive, the thoughts of the artist or of the viewer.

The degree to which visual characteristics serve the words, or the words serve a visual goal, varies throughout the show. Chenicek uses writing within a purely visual scheme. At the other end of this spectrum is Leslie Haines’ children’s book Cadillac or Susan Hulme’s “Buster Pablo,” a poem printed on a paper box filled with feathers and wire.

Single words and short phrases figure in other works. Sometimes they serve as a central element, as in Kit Reuther’s painting “This Rain,” in which that phrase repeats in rows, nearly effaced to fade into the gray ground of the painting, a fitting evocation of climate and muted gestures. Andrew Saftel’s work is typically more densely populated, and he treats words like collage elements added to his painting surface. In “My Universe,” paintings of constellations intermingle with a cabin and figures of people, animals and plants. He has also attached small objects like screwdrivers, and in this context, the fragments of words he has included—parts of a calendar, handwritten and typed phrases that appear to be snippets from letters—act like additional mixed-media elements.

Besides using varied approaches, the artists chosen by the library represent diverse backgrounds. The range is clearest in the juxtaposition of “Ophelia’s Song,” an earnest and passionate work by Nashville School of the Arts junior Izamar Rodriguez, next to the piece by Saftel, probably the most experienced and accomplished artist in the show.

Most of the artists use words very, well, literally. Words are introduced to fill in the meaning of an image, or writing stands in for a particular type of text or for the act of writing. What is missing are more conceptual uses of words, where they stand as objects with a problematic connection to syntax or meaning, as in the work of Ed Ruscha.

Ben Vitualla comes closest to a more conceptual strategy in “Asin (Salt).” He repeats the word “asin” across a green background. The only other figure is the stencil of an angel dressed in regal clothes. The word, which means “salt” in Tagalog, is a visual and phonetic rhyme for “Asian” and “a sin.” That’s a dense set of associations.

The library does well with shows that organize local artists around themes and forms that relate to its mission.

As it did with the earlier show on artist books, the refined setting encourages serious consideration of what each work has to offer. But seeing how they relate to each other provides the greatest insight.