John Humphries
Artist Statement
John Humphries is a visual artist and designer focusing on translating one media form to another. The creative work takes the form of watercolor drawings, carved wooden slabs, automatic poems, and multi-layered sounds. The subject of these studies are the desert southwest, a personal narrative coded in a tragic greek myth, and indigenous plant life. Currently, directing graphic media at Miami University within the Department of Architecture-School of Fine Art, John has worked as a designer of architecture and other environments. Dissemination of creative works has been through several exhibitions, panel member as design reviewer, and presentations at national conferences.
Description of Work
The research concerns itself with on the translation of one media to another, specifically how one form of expression might change
directly into another form. The original watercolour drawings in the throws of shifting from two dimensional drawings to three dimensional constructs are derived from the classical narrative of Pelops, son of Tantalus, a story of transformation, rebirth, deception, lust, and a haunted progeny. Pelops is a tragic figure linking the desires of Poseidon, the Peloponesian wars, and the tragedies of Agamemnon, his descendant. In modern usage, pelops is the root of something formed from the mud, or earth, or nothing. Within the drawings bits of time, luminance, and hue become erratic sounds captured with wood and air, and seemingly non-sensical automatic poems.
When the technicalities of each is understood:
image becomes text,
video is audio,
text becomes audio,
panorama shifts to automatic writing, then dialog
image leads to form,
form to narration,
deep rooted psychosis becomes opera.
Perhaps an equivalent analogy might be of industrial food production where nearly inedible corn can be translated into ethanol, xanthan gum, acoustical ceiling tiles, or chicken nuggets. The nutritional value of the process is yet to be determined or evaluated by the
FDA.
