“This Is Reading”

A solo exhibition at the International Arts Center Troy University, spring 2025

Inspired by 18^th and 19^th century fabric sample books, and based on my own most-recently published book entitled SPEECH, “This Is Reading” is an encounter with reading and writing as textile and text—shape, color, feeling, and impression. In sample books from around the world, and in medieval and early modern European scripts, lettering mimics thread, and what looks like contemporary abstraction is centuries-old mercantile arrangements of fabric swatches. Whereas reading is usually thought of as an act of consumption—the individual reader “getting” something from a text—these recent paintings, weavings, and book objects invite a multi-directional exchange of sensation between art, book, and audience. When screens and summaries dominate, often shortcutting the material and slow experience of text, “This Is Reading” argues for embodied reading and writing: away from consumer models and toward the analogue glow of authorship shared and authentic because it occurs moment-by-moment and never alone.