Working on RAVEL was an amazing opportunity to continue my visual exploration into shapes. For this collection, I focused on the modern Roman alphabet (aka the 26 letterforms from A—Z) as the primary shapes. RAVEL became a collection of prints about these shapes coming together and falling apart. While creating, my main questions circled around a.) How can I break letters apart into new, interesting forms, and b.) Is it possible to obscure these already imbued symbols so much that they ‘lose’ their meaning? The letterforms in RAVEL run the gamut from being clear and legible to fractured, and finally to some forms completely disintegrating into their environments. According to Merriam-Webster, a contronym is a word having two meanings that contradict one another, so finding the word ‘ravel’ was perfect for bringing all these ideas together in a collection form. Ravel means both to tangle and to untangle, which is a wonderful way to think about these visual shapes in space.
