Katherine Mccoy {graphic designer} imploded the traditional dichotomy between seeing and reading.Her approach challenged readers to produce their on meaning which elevated the status of the designer with in the authorship.The words can be preceived as icons, forms, patterns through the use of ambiguity and complexity. She developed a model of typography as a discourse in which the designer and the reader actively interpret an author's text.
Evidence: artist {Candy Jernigan}
This book evidence is the most interesting book I have seen on the subject of collecting and documentation of ephmera and found objects. Candy Jernigan decided to make a book when she traveled to europe that would contain any and all physical "proof" that she had been their : ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt- anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that the viewer could make a new picture of the remnants. For Candy objects emerged as "icons" for particular cities and these objects became the material for the book.
One of the many documentations of ephmera in this book I find especially interesting is "Blood of a Vagrant" in the section of urban evidence. In Blood of a Vagrant she writes: "An unknown man, apparently the victim of a knife attack, collapsed on the sidewalk where he lay motionless until an ambulance took him, in a greatly weakened and in fact unconscious state, to a nearby hospital. The voluminous quantity o
f blood that he left behind gradually seeped into the sidewalk and was further diminished , two or three days later, by an earily morning rain." Blood of a Vagrant moves me because I sense Candy's identification with the victim, I feel the shock of how easily life can slip away, and how the last tangible evidence of life which was a pool of blood can just slowly vanish into nothing. I really enjoy her use of diagrammatic dotted-line signaling where the ambulance came and left and also the hand written information oppose to a font.
Evidence: artist {Candy Jernigan}
This book evidence is the most interesting book I have seen on the subject of collecting and documentation of ephmera and found objects. Candy Jernigan decided to make a book when she traveled to europe that would contain any and all physical "proof" that she had been their : ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt- anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that the viewer could make a new picture of the remnants. For Candy objects emerged as "icons" for particular cities and these objects became the material for the book.
One of the many documentations of ephmera in this book I find especially interesting is "Blood of a Vagrant" in the section of urban evidence. In Blood of a Vagrant she writes: "An unknown man, apparently the victim of a knife attack, collapsed on the sidewalk where he lay motionless until an ambulance took him, in a greatly weakened and in fact unconscious state, to a nearby hospital. The voluminous quantity o
f blood that he left behind gradually seeped into the sidewalk and was further diminished , two or three days later, by an earily morning rain." Blood of a Vagrant moves me because I sense Candy's identification with the victim, I feel the shock of how easily life can slip away, and how the last tangible evidence of life which was a pool of blood can just slowly vanish into nothing. I really enjoy her use of diagrammatic dotted-line signaling where the ambulance came and left and also the hand written information oppose to a font.
2 comments:
i remember you showing me the Evidence book in the lab, and i was still wondering what you think is the difference between this book and a regular scrap book. However, after reading this posting of yours, I have come to realize that the difference is all in the in design. A regular scrap book just shows ephemera, while Jernigan's has another layer of meaning, which is about life's fleeting moments, if no one was there to document such events, then they would just be lost in the wind (or blood that has washed away, in this case)
I like in your first example how you explained "The words can be preceived as icons, forms, patterns through the use of ambiguity and complexity." And I am not entirely sure if it is just a bad scan, but the image in your posting is quite blurry, but I see certain patterns emerging through the text, probably because it is so indecipherable. It is a curious method of creating such complexity within a body of type.
it must be really interesting to follow through her book of found objects, and in a way, relive Candy Jernigan's travels and experiences. When you talked about how she challenges the reader to produce their own meanings with her artwork, it reminded me of something we were talking about in my 201 class. We were talking about how some artists feel that their artwork is not complete until the viewer completes it through their own interpretations. Also, when you said that Jernigan's collections grew to include things such as food smears, I thought that was kind of gross, but then I guess its all part of laying down all her experiences, even down to the food she ate. Something as small as a food smear can trigger a deep memory for the artist or communicate a certain message to the viewer.
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