The 2023 exhibition Vocabulary brought work by 27 artists to Chattanooga’s Jewish Cultural Center around the ways visual and written languages create dialogue.
The exhibition included poetry, illustrated text, non-traditional books, coded images and works developed through exchange between artists.
More than one form of artistic language
Programme director Ann Treadwell initially considered focusing on two-dimensional visual elements.
The exhibition expanded when it became clear that vocabulary could include spoken language, text, familiar symbols, hidden codes, material and the repeated grammar of an individual practice.
Five artists combined poetry or other text with illustration.
Two presented series asking viewers to think through social questions, while other works invited audiences to locate recurring elements or interpret an internal visual system.
Twenty-seven different ways to communicate
Participants included Randy Abeyta, Kem Alexander, Wade Brickhouse, Jeff Cohen, Olga deKlein, Sharon Feldstein, Lupina Haney, Maxine Hess and Sammi Callihan.
The wider group included Jeanne Hewell Chambers, Randy Fairchild, Russell Gearing, Faye Ives, Howard Kaplan, Ruth McRae, Kim Printz, Dominique Pruitt, Richard Rice, David Salerno and other local and national artists.
One work developed as a direct dialogue between two artists.
Vocabulary avoided proposing a single language through which all art should be understood.
Instead, it treated every practice as a system with its own words, marks, materials and rules.
The exhibition asked viewers to recognise that interpretation begins when two parties establish enough common ground to communicate, while leaving room for ambiguity and difference.