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
