What is the function of painting in the collective effort to communicate? Buried under pieces of symbols, lacking standardized rules of grammar, the message in a painting would hide but for our instinct to endow patterns with meaning. What is the relationship between painting and other expressions?

 

Compare painting with writing, for example. The written word, although traditionally confined by what is expected of language, i.e. grammatical rules, may plunge into the standard-less Language of a painting. This form of writing evades conventional analysis, forcing the audience to sort significant messages, as we will instinctively do. From this perspective, paintings and writings are read in the same manner. Painting translates into writing.

Below is the poem that began our project.

The note started before it sounded.

A trickle of energy drawn by the magnetism of mouth to mouth. It extended from body through the brass or silver necks, around the curves of maple bodies, building and stretching until everyone filled the room. Like the atoms of air and metal and flesh (the carbons and hydrogens, the sugars and salts), the people became unaware of the differences between star and air and flesh as the energy colored over the lines of the words in the definition-just shapes that spoke no more seeing no purpose to be the finger when the finger already touched the small moon tab to produce something more profound.

And the energy, broke off and cracked from the neck, static lightning forming and felt as each bond ripped, vibrated, ran to the stars where they took with them some small part of us, condensed like particles awaiting another big bang leaving only the atoms of room and skin spinning

5/4.

This collaboration began a year after I graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a degree in studio art and chemical engineering. Currently, I am employed at the Patent Office while continuing to pursue studies in art. Elle Chimiak studies writing and chemistry at Amherst College in Massachusetts.