murmur — ALAN BUR JOHNSON

Murmur: Cross Translation

photo transparencies, steel, glass

19.25" x 19.25" x 1.5"

2014

The Murmur series is compositionally based upon the syllabic structures of traditional forms of poetry. Each framed image replaces a syllable, creating a visual mnemonic that remains open to definition. The photographic imagery has a sensual, flesh-like quality that appears to roll with the fluidity of the tongue in speech, or reference the bilateral symmetry of vocal chords. In reality, the layered transparent imagery is of weathered, cracked, sun-bleached elk teeth found while hiking in the mountains of Arizona. Each poem restores voice to the collected silence.