for love or money

Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
19 November 2005 – 19 February 2006

First are words:

-words gathered into lists, or phrases
-words written across paper
-words carved into, onto, or out of wood
-words painted onto canvas
-words high up, encircling a room
-words etched into silver
-words projected (or not) onto a wall

The text in many of these works originates from spiritual or biblical sources. But the sources are, in some ways, insignificant. What a work becomes is more important than what it comes from. Words materialize. Text is made physical.  

Let me be straightforward. Isn’t a line of written text also a line drawn?  In reward, the line drawn across the wallpaper reads, “Sixty One Thousand Six Hundred and Six Gold Dollars.” It’s a line from a letter written in 1848 by the dead Shaker foundress, Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784), to a community of her living followers in New Lebanon, New York. The line in the letter, like the line on the wallpaper, suggests a large sum of money. It might be considered a check—but drawn on whose account? 

Related reading
Mystery Man, by Ann Starr, in Columbus Monthly, February 2006