Fertile Ground Indeed!

March 24, 1998

A big red arrow stood at the end of the driveway, its flashing lights pointing the way around the back of a residential building just off Virginia Drive in Orlando. Inside was the studio of Justice W. Mitchell. On March 14th,1998, he pushed his furniture aside, patched and painted the walls, and presented his recent work.

Studio shows are always interesting because the artist's physical space becomes part of the performance. You know you are not in a place of business (like a gallery), or a place of worship (like a museum), you are in a place that is set aside for dynamic creative activity. Just being there encourages you to think differently, to be seduced into your own creative imaginings about what you are viewing.

When artists invites you into their sanctuary, you are there to play a special role. You are a monitor, participating in the process by giving the artist the most timely sort of feedback - unless you are privileged enough to drop in for coffee and watch the work in progress. Justice's invitation did not disappoint.

So what is Justice creating? He is part of a current in the Fine Arts that is flowing around and over the new possibilities of the digital medium. Art created using digital tools, is still attempting to escape the clever-craft stage and emerge from the self- reflective grip of the new technology. Justice didn't assault us with bells and whistles.

Justice chose dye sublimation prints, a comforting familiar two-dimensional approach that doesn't overwhelm or threaten the viewer. He uses the new digital flexibility to quietly and powerfully construct his messages, The technology and his careful craftsmanship is ever-present but fully subordinate to the content.

Justice presented an assortment of dye sublimation prints based on highly personal subjects. I saw them primarily as explorations of how artists go about sharing personal meanings and opening them up for interpretation. Justice extracted access points from the words and pictures of his own life. These texts became the common ground on which viewers could reconstruct their own experiences.

The relationship of words and pictures is not new. Jump back to hieroglyphics, temple inscriptions, illuminated manuscripts, cubist and futurist explorations, or just in the last half century you can examine the pop expressions by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Indiana, or Ruscha. Justice's contribution is not in the use of text, but in its manipulation.

The words he chose to incorporate seemed mysterious and personal, yet familiar. I read them as his witness of special moments. He treated diverse subjects, from vintage pin-up-girl playing cards to a stone angel from Palm Cemetery in Winter Park.

For me, his most interesting images were the ones balancing both words and pictures, bridging the artificial chasm between typography and illustration. He incorporated a page of script from a diary, a block of dense and rambling verse, and a collection of cryptic but related thoughts arranged like satellites. None of the text was easy to read, which caused the viewer to focus and think, rather that skim and scan as one would normally be inclined to do with print.

The combination of words and pictures was so successful because he skillfully rendered textures and purposefully delineated edges and relationships. The complex color stories were presented in a clean and clear way - an excellent use of the richness that can be achieved with dye sublimation.

The nexus Justice renders between words and images is subtly presented. At some point the distinction breaks down and the shape of words become undulating lines of color, pulsing at the punctuation, ending at line breaks. The pictures take on edges and iconic shapes that almost seem readable as words.

You are obliged to look through the words and pictures, past the presentation to what lies behind the melded forms. His images seem to invite that sort of playful speculation, in a way that words or pictures alone could not. Justice seems to want us to decode his messages only as much as is necessary to create our own meaning. He is trying to provide common ground about what it is to be human, vulnerable, and subject to the context of our lives.

Digital media must be carefully explored for many more years before its extraordinary potential can manifest. Justice is helping to point the way by laying the proper foundation for harnessing digital possibilities. He is helping us to see and read in new ways; and, for that reason alone, his work is worth monitoring and collecting. Sales at the show were brisk.

Brian Arbogast
is a sculptor living in Winter Park. Well into middle age, he is sometimes caught being playful, but is not fun to be around like the younger generation -- which he sincerely admires. He believes somebody has to be serious in this life so there will be some balance. As a teenager he clearly remembers thinking that the solitary, contemplative lifestyle was not much in demand, and if he chose it there wouldn't be as much competition. He was wrong -- but now he's too old to make changes that fundamental.