Although it’s an exhibit examining how language is employed by visual artists, The Carnegie’s Wordly is not wordy. This sparsely installed show doesn’t spell out each artistic intention with wall text. It’s up to you to translate. At times, a work will remain impenetrable. But with just one or two words, or sometimes only a hint of a word, its three artists frequently make connections that are humorous, comforting and thought-provoking.
An insistent buzz from a closet leads to an open suitcase containing a red neon sign that local artist and builder Fred Ellenberger has programed to flash EAT, ME and MEAT.
With “HERE,” a hand-lettered sign stuck in two small pots of grass, Avril Thurman stakes out her own space, even if temporarily. A separate asphalt-on-canvas piece from this Cincinnati poet and artist reminds us she’s “Not Done.” The raised letters suggest a bumpy path that she plans to smooth out soon.
John M. Bennett, a Columbus poet known for performing, producing and collecting experimental literature since the 1970s, scrawls random words and fragments that can be impossible to decipher. His collages on cardboard carry nonsensical titles like “Bomb the Neck” and “Leaky Fork” — loose thoughts that flow into childlike drawings merge with torn pages from Spanish-language texts. Yet in the openness of the galleries, some of these mysterious mash-ups have a way of evoking a snippet from some forgotten dream.
“It’s called Wordly, but it’s not label-heavy,” says Carnegie exhibitions director Matt Distel, who curated the exhibit with Cincinnati gardener, artist and archivist Peter Huttinger.
Huttinger concedes that visitors will find some Wordly work obtuse, but by cataloging and showcasing all kinds of Bennett ephemera — labels, postcards, matchbooks — in a small reading room, he helps redefine and elevate what art can be.
Huttinger describes Bennett’s poetry readings, which are on a video loop, as “percussive rants,” yet he writes that, “I was stunned to find that the repetition of a two-word phrase could both irritate and invoke a sense of well-being.”
For 30 years, Bennett produced Lost and Found Times, which started as a “mail art” listing of fake ads. His clip suit from 1978 — a white butcher’s coat covered with metal clips — suggests he’s found offbeat sources of inspiration every day. His looping writing style is called “asemic language,” which Distel explains as intended to form a feeling rather than a word.
A separate exhibit downstairs also features an artist who developed his own language — Raymond Thunder-Sky, the stoic “construction clown” who was a familiar sight downtown in his overalls, hard hat and frilly collars until his death in 2004. When visiting Wordly, also tour Demolition Man: Selected Works from the Raymond Thunder-Sky Archives to appreciate the essential building blocks of our lives and our communications.
A generous 136 of Thunder-Sky’s 2,000 drawings line the walls, along with his many toolboxes of found objects and a rack of his clown suits. Whenever this quiet outsider artist took a wrecking ball to a factory or government institution in one of his artworks, he used his block-letter caption to envision something better — a Clownville amusement park, a costume factory or a highway honoring his Native American heritage.
“I could have easily seen if we did (Wordly) as a single exhibition in the whole space, Raymond could have been the fourth artist in the show,” Distel says. “He was very deliberate about his text. It’s a narrative, but it’s also sometimes a false narrative or an imaginative, hopeful narrative, full of hopeful wishes.”
Visionaries + Voices and Thunder-Sky Inc. gallery, both in Northside, carry on his legacy today.
Together, Wordly and Demolition Man tear away at notions of how much you have to say to have an impact on the world.
WORDLY and DEMOLITION MAN continue through June 10 at The Carnegie (1028 Scott Blvd., Covington). There’s a free screening of Thunder-Sky: A Documentary Film 7 p.m. June 1. More info: thecarnegie.com.
This article appears in May 17-24, 2017.