As I moved on to my next series, I was thinking about language in some different ways.  Part of the process consisted of collecting all-American phrases from all-American friends and using them in the paintings.  As I created the layered canvases in this series, which I called "Pecking Orders," I hoped to decontextualize some of the more routine features of daily life, thereby showing anew just how odd (and thus evocative) some of these features can be.  I thought about other subjects too; I wanted to break routine down to its disciplinary roots: does learning a routine actually mean learning the rules?  If so, who's giving the rules that we follow when we trod our daily treadmills of habit?  If we resist those orders, are we doomed merely to following new ones?  Thus, I put on display for renewed contemplation: found phrases and numbered patterns; trained ways of seeing yet not seeing, hearing yet not hearing; the differences-that-make-a-difference that make language; the totem-poled tyrannies of supposedly objective perception.  And some of the questions that hover nearby as I work: what are the boundaries between the symbolic realms of art, mathematics, and language?  Can the regimented march of numbers be rendered poetic?  Can the symbolic orders of artistic imagery reveal the domineering mathematics of language?
 
 

Suk Ja Kang-Engles is an independent artist living and working in Urbana, IL. Some of her actual efforts are on display at Lowe Gallery in Atlanta. She can be reached via email by clicking here.