nimbus
| nimbus II (after Michael Joyce's "nimbus," 2003), 2007 wire, shadow, motor, light 80" x 62" Installed at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD |
About Alexandra Grant's work "Nimbus– wire, shadow, motor, light
after Michael Joyce's nimbus, 2004"
Anyone who grew, as I did, in snow country can recall the shape of breath in air,
perhaps even sense how the words secret themselves, crystalline passengers gazing out
from inside these small, vagrant cumuli, drifting away like zeppelins, the taut viscous glint
of tiffany glass soap bubbles suddenly popping, momentarily leaving a droplet
suspended in air, dry and flat, then fast falling; this dissipation apparently prompted
by nothing more than foreplay, the exquisite tension of coherence, no matter how much
one suspects some fairytale stray breeze, twig poke, small bird, whirling seed, hot
exhalation of soil, sea or far-away other. But to think that what one writes shapes itself
likewise before you, the recurrence of one's ordinary rhythms, the accustomed vowels
and consonantal articulations themselves reticulated like lewd brambles clinging to one
another in a dank swale (or, perhaps more decorously though no less fervid, the lofty,
gloriously imbricated branches of the American Elm trees looming high above lovers on a
shaded bench along the Poets' Walk in Central Park on a warm April morning) is
unimaginable.
That the mind– or what escapes it as breath written down and scored for another's
breathing– itself forms whorls, coves, and eddies like the paisley of fingerprints– each
sentence as distinct from another, the procession of even commonplace marked like the
bright network of silvery pores upon the skin of an infant– is a surprise.
It is a shift from all this, from thinking "I wrote this, do you see" to actually (the act of it,
the handiwork) seeing the craft of it before you like a blooming, the words twisted,
boustrophedonic elephants, circus creatures, their backward wire shapes sprawling along
the only vaguely longitudinal coordinates of unseen magnetic fields, and yet seemingly
fastened upon nothing, viz. how the bright and spiraling tentacles of spring Clematis
grasp tenderly for support, a rickety framework within which God, wearing sandals,
hangs out the elements of the world like a jewelry maker in a market stall his wire
earrings.
Seeing Alexandra Grant's work "Nimbus," conceived "after" a text of mine, I felt a
delight in my own language that I have not felt otherwise, her art giving the shape of
breath and hand to the air and yet knowing that, were these words some other ones or
one's– other words or another man or woman's– they would form themselves differently
under her pricked fingers, wind the languorous knots of their wire orbits otherwise;
knowing that in some sense it does not matter, will not, whether anyone has read them
before this or ever will, the reading now quite something else, a making one's way
through the void, the silvery threads of spittle of Bombyx mori, the silk worm, weaving a
cocoon like the Milky Way seen from beyond this galaxy. To be outside language and
yet to see oneself woven in it is a pleasure like a dream.
We stood there, a half dozen of us on the sidewalk on a warm February night in Echo
Park, Los Angeles, looking back in through the storefront gallery window, each of us
wondering aloud at the fragile beauty of this spinning thing, how it painted the light like
a dream does, the runes of it glinting in air and shadowing dark against the illuminated
wall.
by Michael Joyce
after Michael Joyce's nimbus, 2004"
Anyone who grew, as I did, in snow country can recall the shape of breath in air,
perhaps even sense how the words secret themselves, crystalline passengers gazing out
from inside these small, vagrant cumuli, drifting away like zeppelins, the taut viscous glint
of tiffany glass soap bubbles suddenly popping, momentarily leaving a droplet
suspended in air, dry and flat, then fast falling; this dissipation apparently prompted
by nothing more than foreplay, the exquisite tension of coherence, no matter how much
one suspects some fairytale stray breeze, twig poke, small bird, whirling seed, hot
exhalation of soil, sea or far-away other. But to think that what one writes shapes itself
likewise before you, the recurrence of one's ordinary rhythms, the accustomed vowels
and consonantal articulations themselves reticulated like lewd brambles clinging to one
another in a dank swale (or, perhaps more decorously though no less fervid, the lofty,
gloriously imbricated branches of the American Elm trees looming high above lovers on a
shaded bench along the Poets' Walk in Central Park on a warm April morning) is
unimaginable.
That the mind– or what escapes it as breath written down and scored for another's
breathing– itself forms whorls, coves, and eddies like the paisley of fingerprints– each
sentence as distinct from another, the procession of even commonplace marked like the
bright network of silvery pores upon the skin of an infant– is a surprise.
It is a shift from all this, from thinking "I wrote this, do you see" to actually (the act of it,
the handiwork) seeing the craft of it before you like a blooming, the words twisted,
boustrophedonic elephants, circus creatures, their backward wire shapes sprawling along
the only vaguely longitudinal coordinates of unseen magnetic fields, and yet seemingly
fastened upon nothing, viz. how the bright and spiraling tentacles of spring Clematis
grasp tenderly for support, a rickety framework within which God, wearing sandals,
hangs out the elements of the world like a jewelry maker in a market stall his wire
earrings.
Seeing Alexandra Grant's work "Nimbus," conceived "after" a text of mine, I felt a
delight in my own language that I have not felt otherwise, her art giving the shape of
breath and hand to the air and yet knowing that, were these words some other ones or
one's– other words or another man or woman's– they would form themselves differently
under her pricked fingers, wind the languorous knots of their wire orbits otherwise;
knowing that in some sense it does not matter, will not, whether anyone has read them
before this or ever will, the reading now quite something else, a making one's way
through the void, the silvery threads of spittle of Bombyx mori, the silk worm, weaving a
cocoon like the Milky Way seen from beyond this galaxy. To be outside language and
yet to see oneself woven in it is a pleasure like a dream.
We stood there, a half dozen of us on the sidewalk on a warm February night in Echo
Park, Los Angeles, looking back in through the storefront gallery window, each of us
wondering aloud at the fragile beauty of this spinning thing, how it painted the light like
a dream does, the runes of it glinting in air and shadowing dark against the illuminated
wall.
by Michael Joyce