Language is a great signifier of difference.  I recall my relationship to language & place, traveling alone in Italy a few years ago. Despite the effort of a beginner’s class in the language prior to taking that trip, I constantly felt cut out of the loop of understanding & of basic information exchange. Thankfully I could order wine & did so at the end of every day(!), opting for either a quarto (1/4 litre, so civilized) de vino rosso or bianco (or un becchiere, glass). I moved throughout the country in a bubble, emerging for the shared language of visual art. The Italians rumbled & cajoled & gesticulated around me, even the children at city bus stops wildly telling their cell phone tales with no degree of privacy, et moi; pas un mot de comprehension.

A stranger in a strange land. Like my parents who spoke multiple languages & so many immigrants arriving here as adults, fully other. I have been alternately plagued by the curse of otherness or intrigued by the mystery & possibility, and the braveheartedness of otherness, all my life.

I grew up in a partially shut out world. The purposeful shutting out by grownups, as they told secrets, said private things, gossiped in their several tongues, leaving the children, myself, 1 sibling & some of my cousins, out. We understood it was not for us, and from today’s perspective, maybe not to do with secrecy, but more to do with relishing the ability to share who they had been in the pre-past, a comforting zone.

Though it also conjured up a massive dark cloud of a secret. The pre-past being pre-war, pre-death camps, pre-upheaval. The speaking of English, their 4th, 5th? or more, language (& beyond; culture, climate & ways), marking at least me, as other. I have often said my mother tongue was ‘broken English’.

Now Spanish has become ours as a family, with my oldest son married to an Argentinian. I embrace the cadence & music of the language. I marvel at my own flesh & blood son speaking those excited exclamative or dulcet tones, exchanging pleasantries, private romanticism... the language appeals & beckons.


It may be that there is an incompleteness inherent in any text or words used in visual art, but like spoken language, the mostly obstructed use of text in my work offers the viewer a moment or more of deeper investigative purpose, with the possibility of moving away from passive reception to a more personal search for meaning, though it’s not intended in a prescriptive manner.

I think about ‘communication’ being the pivotal connection to my work. It is perhaps when examined further, more to do with being, perceiving, & comprehending otherness. Not original, but mine nonetheless.

And if you want to stay on the coloured surface that is fine too. Salut, au revoir, hasta pronto, addio, búcsú...