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  • Aluminum Word Sculptures/HE/THE, early word sculptures, 1970.
  • Acrylic Word Sculpture/SHE, early word sculptures, 1973.
  • We The People, model for the We the People project, 1976.
  • Survival Sculpture, Waters of the Nations/Messages from the World, ice sculpture for the UN Plaza, New York, NY, 1982.
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Language Images

In my early works, words and language are both subject and image. Such “Language Images” are of continuing interest to me, as are visual symbols, and calligraphies. Early works included letter and word sculptures, for both interior and exterior sites from random arrays of small plastic letters strewn across fields as if remnants of a discarded language, to shimmying word fountains.

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Early Works:

  • Language Images
  • The Namewall, 1974
  • Namewall II
  • Namepoems and “The Eight”, 1978-80
  • We the People, 1976
  • Waters of the Nations/Messages from The World, 1981-82
  • The Lady and The Bird: 1975 – 1980
  • The Lady and The Bird: Memory Pictures
  • Performances
  • Wingtrace/The Sign of Its Track
  • Op Wieken / Into Flight 1990

These six foot high letters formed from punctured plastic piping would shake, rock and roll as the many thin streams of water coursed through—to iconic word sculptures, six foot high, which spelled “HE” or “SHE” in gleaming metal in three dimensions. The materials included thin aluminum surfaces, silk screened with airplane construction drawings from an aerospace company in San Diego, which inspired a three dimensional word poem of the single word “LIFT” composed of this metal material called “airplane lofting.”

© 2021 Joyce Cutler Shaw