Often referred to as “graphic scoring,” the artist/writer has attempted to capture the shape of thought and reunite the oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling with the printed page. At the center of the exhibition is the artist’s newest project Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, a collaboration with poet/investigative journalist Dennis J Bernstein (Paper Crown Press, 2019). In a poem about dyslexia, letters are on the move, words skew out of order, rotate and distort, engaging the viewer/reader towards empathy. In addition to the book, the exhibit features Five Oceans in a Teaspoon animations where words and sentences loop and wind around one another in a poem about a knitting club, letters struggle to become words in a poem about Alzheimer’s, and search for memory, halt, rotate and stretch in confusion, awe and frustration.
Other notable pieces in the exhibit include: Globalization: Preventing the Sameness of the World and clips from 1001 Voices: Symphony for a New America—offshoots of Crossing the BLVD (W.W. Norton) co-authored with Judith Sloan; animations and films used in Lehrer’s performances of his illuminated novel A LIFE IN BOOKS: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (Goff Books); Lehrer and Bernstein’s first book/play FRENCH FRIES (1984, VSW); and other solo and collaborative bookworks.
