Presentation Video
Transcript:
Hello, my name is Miss. Jolanta Lapiak. I am a literary art professor.
[insert art piece from 2013]
Recently, my art has been representative of African pieces “Spring Dawn”.
Long ago, when I was a master student in the fall of 2005, I thought about how American Sign Language can be documented and shown on a written platform. I remember looking at the influential work of Japanese Zen Calligraphy. It really touched me, but as I took a closer look at both Sign Language and Calligraphy, I noticed they were similar.
The writing in Calligraphy is very visual and can differ by location, the same as American Sign Language. The language itself is very visual and varies depending on location. The grammar, syntax, structure are all similar. In addition, both forms beautifully emphasize movement.
I looked at both of these forms and understood how both forms are very visual, and I tried for hours and hours to figure out the connection between the two forms. Naturally, in Japan painting and calligraphy all resources they use to create this art form all comes from nature. Some resources they utilize can be rice paper and suwi trek. Even the ink comes from nature. I had to question how American Sign Language utilizes nature. Could it be photography? No, technically that’s not natural or correlated to nature. I went through various ideas until I thought about drawing ASL. I started writing some of the phonological forms associated with American Sign Language. I emphasized elements such as hand shapes, movement. One of my earliest examples I painted will be shown on the screen.
[“I love you” drawing shown on the screen]
The start of that initial idea and the process involved had to be paused briefly. I was very thankful for that to happen. Arnold Ashburns, in the past, had thought about the process but had no idea how or what the influences were. Secondly, I decided to turn my attention to the written philosophy of language.
Really, it was important and the key was the article by Derida. She wrote about tracing and archiving literary pieces of writings, upon various other ideas. She studied and elaborated on the definition of language, braille, American Sign Language, etc. Derida wrote about the application of sign language writing and transformed it into various philosophical applications/ avenues. Despite the analysis of the various avenues being dense, I was able to dissect it and understand philosophical language, different meanings of thought, and big concepts. For hours I critiqued all her ideas on the various avenues of ASL writing.
[insert video of Lapiak critique/ various examples of her work]
Despite thinking about the various aspects of ASL writing, I still couldn’t take my mind off of calligraphy, more specifically signed calligraphy. I decided to take photos and film simultaneously, and write.
[insert her examples]
Again, that still wasn’t enough. I still filmed and wrote how I felt on paper. All of the filming and writing got put on hold once again when I became pregnant. When my child was born I focused on language acquisition and I filmed and carefully documented all three years and the development of the language. After they turned three, I found examples of different writings in Asia and I became entranced. I researched it and just fell in love with it. I, again, applied it to sign and filmed the process. I was full of many ideas and had various experiments on how to change and improve.
The next thing I did was start creating my first big project, “Spring Dawn”. I went back and made adjustments influenced by Asian themes, but I realized it was only the beginning.
[Insert example]
That was only the first step, but going forward I see all the potential there is with this project. All the experiments and playing with different ways to write calligraphy. The possibilities are endless.
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