ARTS & CULTURE
By Pamir Kiciman
Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL — From the Greek, “hymnos” — song of praise — a hymn is a song of joy and praise, often written for ritualistic purposes.
Jason Lord’s current exhibit features songlike visual pieces that leap off the surface and buckle within simple, unpainted pine frames.
He feels that collective singing is a deeply human experience and finds solace in it. He thinks a lot about sound and music and notices that both surface frequently in his work.
It’s not surprising. He was a K-12 music, theater and later visual arts teacher and worked as a vocalist.
According to the artist’s statement, the pieces also represent pages of a deconstructed hymnal tilted vertically. Book cloth and bookmaking materials are used, and some have a definitive crease across the middle punctuated by a red thread, leaving the viewer feeling gutted or doubled over.
“Winter Psalms” wrestles with disorientation. Yet the layered construction is akin to the delicacy of mille-feuilles pastry. A lightness is there, even in the white surfaces simply displaying a syllabary of predominantly monochrome markmaking.
Perhaps this is the melody and rhythm Lord is attuned to: the beat of the heart, the cadence of the breath, and the collective din of viewers interacting with the art and each other.
He described the emotional content of the work as “raw.” The struggle within the lightness is reflected in a multifold and textural approach. It’s never one thing.
Several attendees at the reception were observed looking at the art from one side as if to see into or through it and perhaps sense what the artist is feeling and expressing.
One of them, Linda Cato, a fellow artist friend of Lord, remarked: “You can read the shadows as well as the marks and you can read the space [in between].”
Left: “Monk’s Manual” 17” x 27” mixed media on panel. Right: Linda Cato taking in the side view. Photos and composite by Pamir Kiciman.
The folds are filled with the influences in Lord’s life.
One part is a syncretic spirituality he’s found, another is what it’s like to be queer in the world, tucked in with a longing for a big part of his family life as a child with a Catholic upbringing (“Not a good match”), yet leaving him with a fondness for ritual and repetition, together with metaphysical curiosity.
The work is how he parses it all.
“It’s layered. It’s pulling pieces from here and pieces from there … it’s this particular way to approach being alive and take what is useful and not anything that isn’t.”
One text Lord draws from is Walter Brueggeman’s “Spirituality of the Psalms,” in which the “Book of Psalms” is divided into psalms of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation.
The songs in the disorientation section are also known as “winter psalms,” which is the show’s title. They are songs of despair, disappointment, and anger during times of suffering.
Artists enfold personal storylines, sufferings, and joys into what they create.
For Lord, it’s been a combination of losing his father, him and his partner having independent health issues, finishing his MFA at UNC-Greensboro, shifting locations and people to attend several artist residencies, and now being a “free agent for the first time.”
He’s also using his first year out of school as a self-designed professional practice year.
This is evident as the room is full of the art described here, plus small sculptures serving as “ritual objects” to accompany the oversized hymnals and a series of abstract miniature drawings made with smoke and salt on watercolor paper, which are a beautiful mist of minimalism (both not pictured).
It’s a substantial body of painstakingly made work.
Left: “Ajnas in Wind” 20” x 30” mixed media on panel. Right: “Bardo Song” 17” x 27” mixed media on panel. Photos and composite by Pamir Kiciman.
Artists also have thoughts and responses about the state of society, culture, and the world.
We have common concerns regarding climate and the environment, technology, wars, political and social forces, and human rights to name a few on a planet stretched thin.
The room was full by the time Lord gave a brief artist talk. “I think a lot of us are feeling in the world right now…not sure what’s going to happen next and feeling an end to something,” he struggled to find the right words.
“Shadow Scroll” Sumi ink, complete with carved blocks. Photo by Pamir Kiciman.
The exhibit invites contemplation about disorientation, doubt, faltering faith, and distance from the sacred. Such is the nature of art that viewers may relate to these themes individually, diverging from the artist’s intentions.
Lord said, “Making work that isn’t very clearly anything, is part of my interdisciplinary nature,” and related that he got into fights with faculty members because of it. This elicited loud cheers from what appeared to be a group of young art students.
“I often make work that’s based on curiosity and I have curiosities about language and how we make meaning of language and notation,” Lord explained.
Because of his art’s notational and linguistic aspects, it looks as if it should say something, but they are only marks on surfaces.
Lord is comfortable in the transitional spaces between states. Two other texts he draws from are the “Mandukya Upanishad” and the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
He’s exploring blurred boundaries of consciousness and being as an ongoing orientation. Waking consciousness is only one level. There’s more in dream states and states of surrendering control. Possibility in blending the known and the unknown.
Carter Smith who knows Lord from time spent together at Penland School of Craft, thought it’s a lovely show. “There’s a sculptural quality that comes out in some of the pages where they come away from the work and the frame.”
The emotive works in “Winter Psalms” are available to view at Horace Williams House (610 E. Rosemary St.) through February 23 by appointment only.
Please contact Tama Hochbaum [email protected] or Nerys Levy [email protected].
A perfect outing would be to see this exhibition with a group of friends and try one of the eateries downtown.
Horace Williams House is the only historical house in Chapel Hill open to the public. Operated and maintained by Preservation Chapel Hill, it’s an example of “adaptive reuse,” functioning as the organization’s offices, a meeting and event space, and providing public education programs and art exhibitions in its Octagon Room.
Pamir Kiciman is an artist who writes about a range of the arts and the creative process. He can be reached at [email protected]