Brushwork

Brushwork consists of a selection of pages from Eric Selland's recent notebooks, featuring abstract works done with calligraphic brush. Many of these pieces can stand as individual works, but they are actually part of a whole, often framing, or framed by, text written with black-ink pen, so that the notebook itself functions as a work in its own right.

Eric Selland writes: "In recent years the notebook has become the primary focus of my writing. Part of this comes from a questioning of the concept of the completed work, the 'product,' as being more important than the process - as if writing were merely an inconvenience to be borne as a means of reaching the goal of a finished work, which is then packaged and sold. I share this concern with a number of poets who approach writing as a daily practice. Here there is less emphasis on the final product and more on process. At the same time, however, I realize that I'm moving in two different directions at once : the conceptual or ideal relationship to language and thought in the form of daily writing, and the understanding of language in its materiality, where the written word becomes an object or shape in a visual work." (From the introduction)