Adze

Allen Sutterfield

ADZE is a multi-media artist and writer, whose primary visual medium is collage (though acrylic and oil, oil pastel, colored pencils, drawings, and photography are other interests). “I am especially interested in verbo-visual works, an outgrowth of my double passion for both writing and visual work. Two series are shown here: The Earth Mandala Series and The TV Series. (“T”V” here refers to Text/Visual but I’ll accept the pun!) The Earth Mandala pieces, verbally, show the titles of 36 works that comprised my first show, done in Vancouver in 1978. The “verbal” content is thus actually the names of verbal, dramatic and visual pieces that comprised “Project 36.” The visual centers have been done at various times in the succeeding years, and show, for me, both the conflict and some resolutions of the verbo/visual interests that have dominated my work for the past 30 years. The TV Series is much simpler, featuring single texts from my CITY OF WORDS writing epic, combined with an image that relates in any number of possible ways to the textual content. Most often I use a 4 x 6 photo I have taken, but in the beginning (ca. 1988) I used images, or sometimes objects, from any source available, and still do so, in this ever-ongoing compilation. Originally, the intention was to provide 100 images for each text. However, in recent years I have grown reluctant to place arbitrarily a limit on the number of images. Some texts are much more inviting than others and seem to demand a fuller range of expressive possibilities. So the “100" limit is not absolute, though it will still apply for most of the texts. I usually make a series of ten color zerox copies of each piece, though not always. I’ll be very pleased to provide further information about any of the work shown here, all of which of course is available for purchase. My email address is: adze19@hotmail.com. Enjoy the show!"