Tale Spins: Water, Animals, and Ruins

Abstract

Artist and professor, James Boyd Brent’s new work —intaglios, incisions in rock, and drawings— is about ancillary narratives and half-stories. It illustrates moments that may or may not actually be stories, as such, but which allude to the way the mind concocts a world for itself, among worlds. This idea echoes the work of wood-engraver Thomas Bewick, best known for the small vignettes that he made to adorn the end of chapters, and which denote a sense of a story without the story ever actually being spelled out. Abound in his imagery are stories, but they do not necessarily correspond with the main text. In each, the viewer is drawn to look into a small, distinct and illuminated world. Tale-pieces: water, animals, and ruins points at the multilayered nature of existence, and is an invitation to ponder how consciousness lies between one thing and another—water and land, animals and people, growth and decay.