Browse Exhibits (2 total)

Everyday "Natural" Writing

Everyday natural writing is exactly as it sounds. It is the natural writings, or most commonly "carvings," that people leave for artistic purposes, sending a message through lasting engravings, and sometimes just do aimlessly for the fun of it. In this exhibit you will get only a glimpse at natural writings elements caught in photos; some are only temporary but others may last for decades. Such writings included are artifacts that consist of sand-writing, tree-writing, cement-writing, and sky-writing. Many of these artifacts were donated by individuals from around the globe, and to those who contributed, we say thank you.

That is to say, however, natural writing is not always necessarily taken from a form of nature, but rather using nature to communicate with others of an unknown agenda.

In "The Technology, Environments, and Materials of Everyday Writing," Jacob W. Craig says new forms of everyday writing are usually focused on the relationships between writers’ technologies and contexts. However, this is the beauty in natural everyday writing. There is such a lack of technology, with airplanes being the exception, but strong beauty that covers a surface with a message still being portrayed. Natural everyday writing proves a point within itself that technology is not always needed; sometimes to leave an everlasting image, you just need the guts to vandalize, a stick, and the will to write, knowing that someone out there only might see it.

In order to classify it into a genre, we must "create a new genre," for this exhibit. According to Amy J. Devitt in "Generalizing about Genre," the concept of genres have been around since the times of Aristotle, where he first classified his own works as either a comedy, tragedy, or epic. If genres had to be created in the first place, then why can't we keep creating new ones? The answer is, that we can and we will. Therefore, the genre of this exhibit will be up to you to decide while you look through it. A personal opinion on the genre of the exhibit shall be given by Sophia Ziemer, curator, in the concluding section. That is to say, the genre should not be set, but should rather be ambiguous to certain subjects such as natural writing because everyone observes differently. 

Natural writing is all around us, we just have to find the urge to look for it. By taking natural writing into consideration as everyday writing, we expand limitations put into classifying everyday writing by "being mundane pieces of writing without any scholarly attribute," and turn it into something that can leave an impact on the world.

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Graffiti: Writing Nicely With Others

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This exhibit is composed of pictures of graffiti on multiple walls and doors of an abandoned, unfinished building in Tallahassee, Florida. The exhibit has been designed to take a closer look at how composition happens in a shared, public space by many different composers.

A highly material practice, this graffiti shows that space (and what I think of as "prime real estate") on the walls is very important to the artists. Most of the graffiti takes up the lower portions of the walls: the first people see, the easiest to see at eye level, the most impressive because of the perspective of people who may come in and realize that the letters are as tall as they are. It would be very difficult to get up higher without a ladder, which would be difficult to pull off without being seen. This building is in the backyard of four apartments, and very visible to them.

When I first thought of this idea, a few months ago now, I had visited the space without taking photos. Upon returning to the building with the purpose of taking pictures for this project, I found that the walls were very, very different. Stencils that I had seen on these walls, and on stop signs, electric boxes, and other walls around Tallahasse, as well, were now completely covered and nowhere to be found. Art that seemed to be amateur (sketches of elephants, stencils of the faces of Marilyn Monroe, Zach Efron, and other celebrities, poems written in freehand with no design, just normal handwriting) were the pieces that were covered by new, extensive pieces by more experienced artists.

Instead of remixing other work, artists paint over other work, taking space for themselves, differentiating their work from all others with distinct backgrounds and borders as well as distinct style choices. The outside of one door is tagged with work that could be found inside the building, almost like a name on a mailbox, signifying ownership, like a flag in the soil.

This world of composition is constantly changing; I would not be surprised to return to this building and find it even more covered, even more transformed.

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