Graduate Alumni > Advanced Fiber Studio (Highlights)

Courtney Cadenhead (Fall 2008)
Courtney Cadenhead (Fall 2008)
chalkboard paint, locker

“Why, after all, does one do it?”

I am interested in addressing text as a valid art form outside of literature. Influenced by artists like Jenny Holzer and Mel Bochner, I explore text through individual processes, such as weaving and embroidering, as well as interactive methods including public posters and alternative economies based in the exchange of personal phrases. Recently, I have begun to investigate text written in chalk and other fugitive materials.

I am intrigued by ideas of impermanence and immateriality, specifically in relation to our speech, our thoughts, and ultimately our lives. Lately, I choose chalk as my pen in order to consider the impermanence of both my words and those of admired writers within personal and historical memory. I select everyday objects like chairs, tables, and walls as my paper in order to investigate how these phrases respond to space when it is observed as time, in the fashion of Edgar Allen Poe and other relativists.

My current work deals with transience and impermanence and involves a wide-ranging collection of words and phrases, both appropriated and original, that are written in chalk on objects in both private and public space. Some of this text has been documented through photography, some of which has been turned into animations. Yet other phrases have only ever been viewed by myself. The transience of this written text and the thoughts and ideas it represents is central to my examination, although I remain curious about my compulsion to record these ephemeral writings with photography.

This recent move away from discrete objects both frightens and comforts me. Questions of permanence and purpose have shadowed me for years, so it feels like a natural progression to write directly on objects and then watch that text disappear. Ultimately, I am fascinated by the physical and mental impermanence of our speech, our thoughts, and our lives.