Projects > MIDNIGHT SUN

Drawing by Julie McNiel
Sound Slippage
pencil on manila paper
18 x 24"
2011

In Sound Slippage, language and image co-exist. Runic script, a writing system used by Germanic peoples at the beginning of the common era, has been found engraved on buried weaponry, jewelry, and other objects, and I have included an excerpt of an inscription from a 14th century wooden wand. It begins, “I engrave the runes of healing, I engrave the runes of safekeeping” and references Scandinavian mythic poems. Within this drawing, are also phrases that comment on weather patterns, stock market prices, and other unpredictable forces. Drawn lines link text from an ancient Greek Law-Code regulating the inheritance of property, with a face, a shark’s fin, and a collaged page from a contemporary exercise sheet used by students of Chinese writing.