Anagramation opening June 22 2013 at Red Caboose Gallery and online at Next Picasso

nagramation
An-a-gra-mat-ion[an-uh-gruh-mey-shuhn], n.  1. An exhibition of paintings depicting roughhewn letters of the Alphabet, in an organic, seemingly naturally occurring font, composed from forest floor detritus.  2. Letters configured from tulip tree twigs, gathered along a hiking trail, and then graphically rendered onto the canvas.  3. Finding hidden and mystical meaning in letters by forming words, syllables, nonsense, fragments, hints of asemic writing, scat syllables, coded acronyms and hipster slang.


 Red Caboose Gallery is teaming up with The Next Picasso Gallery for a dual gallery opening on June 21st, from 6-8 pm.  featuring new works by Joan Marie Giampa.  The new work is based on an alphabet composed of tulip tree twigs.  The title,  Anagramation, was coined today by David Betz during an intense brainstorming session about the work on a very productive skype session. 

Exerpt from Press Release by David Betz

Joan Marie Giampa’s latest series, which is the culmination of her long-term exploration of organic found objects and asemic writing. Anagramation is an exhibition of 13 paintings depicting roughhewn letters of the Alphabet, in an organic, seemingly naturally occurring font, composed from forest floor detritus. The letters were initially configured from tulip tree twigs, gathered along local hiking trails, and then graphically rendered onto the canvas. Successive layers of painterly color were built up and then etched into, with the butt of a paint brush, creating exquisite surfaces, which seem more like the result of natural processes, like wind and water erosion, or soil stratification, than the human hand.  Looking at the tulip tree twigs that formed part of her earlier vocabulary, in a fresh light Ms. Giampa realized, “they’re speaking to me and I’m listening. I’ve decided to configure them into letters for this series and… so the new work entails more of the tulip tree twig, but with a language all it's own.” 

The paintings themselves can be presented in any number of groupings, with a multiplicity of potential meanings. Hence the exhibition’s title Anagramation.  Anagrams can be traced back to the time of Moses, as "Themuru" or changing, which was used to find the hidden and mystical meaning in names.  Each time you reconfigure the paintings in new combinations they take on fresh meanings, the sum total having far greater implications than the individual parts. Fully formed words, nonsense syllables, intriguing word fragments, hints of asemic writing, scat syllables, coded acronyms, hipster slang, Dada wordplay, are just some of the many possibilities in hanging these works… The exhibition will be rehung and reconfigured weekly to reflect the potentialities inherent in the letters.