Collages
Call for Entries Accepted Artists

Artist Marjorie Durko Puryear

South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA

Hawaiian Language Lessons – Rude.Hum.Bed.
Mixed Media

Artist Statement
This piece, Hawaiian Language Lessons – Rude. Hum. Bed., is a bizarre coupling of a ‘concrete poetry’ piece found in my own supply archives. The text piece is a uniquely concocted typed phrase sealed in a commercial plastic blister-pack cover…an experimental assignment for a 1968 Dada/Surrealism course, taught at Indiana University.Although I can’t quite image the derivation of the phrase, it is a remarkably astute comment.Other materials in the piece include a torn fragment of embroidered cotton handkerchief, text segments cut from Hawaiian/English language dictionary, glass beads, and stitching.

The Hawaiian Language Lessons series is composed of five, 6″ x 6″ pieces made in 2010/11. Like all of my work, they are formally composed uniquely playful pieces that use out of the ordinary found-object text fragments. The special aspect of Hawaiian Language Lessons is that they embody translations of key words from the rather distinctive Hawaiian language. Finding a Hawaiian dictionary in a resale shop was truly serendipitous and pivotal to the development of this series.

In this work I merge many layers and material elements to create work that offers a viewer’s edgy introspection. Work that references handwritten and typewritten forms of communication -the fictitious tangents that lie in historic sentimentality.