The Matter of Words - Tim Colvin

When I first walked into "The Matter of Words" I was struck by the massive wall of books that shot out of the middle of the floor in the exhibit. I was immediately struck with a couple thoughts "Wow that's cool. Wish I had one of those in my house. (and) Wonder how he thought of that". Immediately I was thinking "creative".

The whole exhibit was actually filled with creative ideas. What I love about minimalist and modern art is one must bring as all of their personal experiences into the art pieces to create self-meaning whereas Renaissance and other styles of beautiful art is appreciated only at face value. I loved every piece. I like the wall hangings because they were beautiful designs created by such simple things like book covers, book glue, and bindings. However, I really loved the main attractions.

The big one I liked was the void with the many painted alphabet noodles. At first I thought, what a boring waste of space because it looked like a nook with carpet, but then I realized they were noodles! How creative! Rather than noodle color they were black! So, I decided to just sit in front of the void and contemplate. I loved that from far away it looked like carpet, if closer you know it's not carpet, and then you get right up to the "don't cross this line" line and you suddenly want to grab the letters and spell a message or spell your name. But why would one create that?

I called the number on the plaque next to the piece to find out. He was writing a love poem to a girl he really like and nothing was coming to him. He felt like he would love the words to just fall from the sky or that he could just shake them out of books. BAM! Creativity hit. He imagined all the letters being shaken out of books and gathering on the floor. I never thought of that when I was writing papers but I can relate! Creative.

The structure in the middle of the exhibit is exactly equal in volume to the void nook. Creative. The structure's idea is that four centuries of books or literature can create this massive wall, but all the words might only fill the floor of the void. It observes the fact that the book is only a structure that holds language and ideas.

Lastly, the bibles with the colorful highlighting was brilliant. I couldn't help but think of our book where it says new ideas are just reformations of old concepts. Highlighting in a bible is an old idea. Having a homeless lady living on the Church stairs highlight the bible in her own way because she envisions it from God - new idea. Art. How creative.

Overall, it was neat to look at words. They can be ideas, languages, structures, patterns, voids, ANYTHING. How interesting to take a thing like a word and then look in and out of the box to find creativity.