First Words, from The Space of Speech, Boston Public Library, (installation view)  Materials: oil stick, oil pastel, graphite, and sumi ink on Arches paper, suspended by binder clips and string

Each unit 22 1/2" x 30"   1998

 

First Words, from The Space of Speech, Boston Public Library, (installation view)

1998

 

First Words, from The Space of Speech, Boston Public Library, (installation view)

1998

 

First Words, from The Space of Speech, Boston Public Library, (installation view)

1998

 

First Words Series, #1

First Words Series, #2

First Words Series, #3

First Words Series, #4

First Words Series, #5

First Words Series, #6

First Words Series, #7

First Words Series, #8

First Words Series, #9

First Words Series, #10

<

>

First Words Series

 

This site-responsive series of 160 modular ink works on paper was created as a site-specific work in an exhibition called The Space of Speech, in the Philip Johnson Wing of the Boston Public Library. The sheets, hung from string and binder clips,  massed together as a temporary frieze in scale with the glass balustrade flanking the stairways that mounted the sixty-foot-high atrium.  Each ink-blot embedded with the words "mama dada” projected a pre-literate cry out into the adult world of textual sophistication.