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Website (c) 2005 Melissa Shields and Jamey Graham. Original Site Design by Phillip John Usher
All copyrights for works exhibited belong to artists; their permission has been granted for their work to be used on this website. For any further reproduction, please contact authors directly.
“Infinity” is an exhibition of visual poetry and letter-inspired artwork. The physical exhibition, housed in Lehman Hall, Harvard Unversity, Cambridge, MA, opened on Thursday, March 3, 2005 at 7pm. (EST). It was open to the public throughout the month of March 2005. Since “Infinity” by definition isn’t bound in space and time, we have constructed this online version of the show.
(If you're in the area, join us for the official opening on Thursday, March 3, 2005, at 7pm. Light refreshments served. (Proper ID required for alcohol). Free and open to the public. For directions, click here.)
Purely verbal definitions of Infinity tend to circle in on themselves, and thus, ironically, to go nowhere: “The quality or attribute of being infinite”; “something that is infinite”; “infinite extent, amount, duration”; “infinite quantity”; “infinite distance.” To wrap our minds around infinity, we are forced to turn to the term itself. To truly grasp it, we have to stretch beyond the spaces with which we are familiar.
What does infinity look like on a canvas? Is it possible to give a sense of the limitless using the limited media available to modern artists? It is the goal and challenge of the artists in this exhibition to test the boundaries of their forms to tackle the term. We recieved vast numbers of two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and virtual versions of infinity, representing the, dare we say, infinite varieties of visual poetry, mail art, and electronic art. Our artists dipped into numbers as well as letters, into handwriting as well as print, into an infinitude of languages. One common shape was the circle; paper was often multipled by glass or reflected by water. Some images are entirely word-based, allowing for the viewer to provide an unlimited number of images for her or himself.
The organizers would like to thank all the artists who submitted work for the exhibition for their patience and generosity, and for the quality of their work. The organizers would also like to thank members of the Dudley House community who made the event possible, especially House Masters Jim and Doreen Hogle, House Administrator Susan Zawalich, and Chad Conlan. Many thanks to Phillip John Usher for first bringing Visual Poetry to Dudley House (and for writing the introduction to the form that appears on the site). You can view the 2004 show, “Errata and Contradiction,” at www.errataandcontradiction.org. The organizers can be contacted (until May 2005) at dudley_literary@yahoo.com.
Thank you for visiting the exhibition!
Jamey Graham and Melissa Shields
Visual Poetry Exhibition Curators and Editors of the Dudley Review
Harvard University’s Dudley House
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/lit.htmlTo contact the organizers, send an email to: dudley_literary@yahoo.com