During this summer’s Flow School, Flowstar Colin Ford facilitated a blog-writing workshop, encouraging even our non-writers to show off their talents. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing the homework assignments from that session. This is the fifth of the series.
I had a conversation with a young artist recently about an intricate linocut that she had chiselled.
The print showed what appeared to be a tightly woven ball of twine hanging from the top of the cut, its many threads slipping in and out of one another, suggesting depth and movement as much as surface and stasis. At the bottom, the yarn, heavy with its own weight, wrapped in upon itself.
“I don’t know what to call it,” the artist said. “I’m leaning towards Untitled.”
Being more verbal than visual, this name left me uninspired. I asked what her print was intended to portray and received a response that was simple, but changed the piece entirely: “It’s the sound my father’s trumpet makes,” she said. Before me, the threads began to unravel with meaning. The cut became mellifluous, a careful orchestration, intelligent and delicate. It become ominous, too, portentous, laden with potential.
How all this would be lost, I thought, were she to stick to her original title.
With these thoughts in mind, I wondered whether I could caption some of my photographs so that the face value of the image was altered. Below is an attempt at reversing the countless times that words leave us frustrated by their inaccuracy, their inadequacy.
The world’s greatest avocado sandwich
The belly flop of homesickness
Welcome to your insignificance
An accidental romance
The sweat between my breasts
