Image credit: Vogue JUL07:pg145 (Ripeness is All) by Lauren DiCioccio
Twice a month, Sara Distin from Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. contributes a post to Flavorwire about an artist or photographer. Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. includes Jen Bekman Gallery, 20×200 and Hey, Hot Shot! (The current competition is open through 8 p.m. EST on May 1.)
West Coast artist Lauren Dicioccio describes her color codification dot drawings as a system like Braille. But unlike those silent white dots, Dicioccio’s works are luminous. Working with a freshly mixed palette, she assigns a color to each letter of the alphabet. With a tiny brush over a sheer sheet of mylar, she carefully marks out every character of the article below, recreating the information on the page. Her final works are clearly recognizable as the elegant layouts from the pages of Vogue or All the News That’s Fit to Print. Dicioccio writes:
My work investigates the physical/tangible beauty of commonplace, mass-produced media-objects: most recently, the newspaper, magazines, office paper, and writing pads… a hole is left behind by the disappearance of these everyday objects. What will happen when we no longer touch information? When newsprint does not rub off onto our fingertips?
What happens when all the news is not actually printed? Instead of filling you with that awful hollow ache for things that are slipping away, Lauren’s drawings instill lust and reaffirm love: for columns of text and clean layouts on shiny pages that leave their trace on your hands, in your head, and sometimes, in your heart. The visual language she’s created is an unexpected parting gift from a wake, the funeral that’s not really a funeral because you’re celebrating life. Thankfully, for now, the Sunday Times still oozes slick guts. And one other thing’s for sure, Dicioccio’s work is here to stay. See her covers of The New York Times at Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco and her prints of paintings from Vogue and Vanity Fair at 20×200. But hurry, they won’t be around for long.
– Sara Distin